


where they hang the lights

by misandrywitch



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, BAMF Alex Manes, Found Family, Galactic politics, and grand escapes, and some kissing, space western, what more do you want???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22652479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misandrywitch/pseuds/misandrywitch
Summary: The laughter of his crew spins around him with the music, the station’s lights and sounds and the engine passing him by. Michael feels himself get pulled back, and back, and back - a place, a time, a man. A memory. Michael had fallen hard and swift and real in one perfect month that ended like a smashed bottle, real glass - all fractures - and almost two years later he’s still sweeping up the pieces.Alex Manes.Michael knocks the rest of his whiskey back, and feels like he's drifting in the black.(ROSWELL NEW MEXICO THE SPACE WESTERN)
Relationships: Alex Manes & Kyle Valenti, Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin, Maria DeLuca & Alex Manes & Liz Ortecho, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 46
Kudos: 167





	where they hang the lights

**Author's Note:**

> 2020 HOMOEROTIC COWBOY CONTENT ONLY. BUT IN SPACE. 
> 
> i showed cowboy bebop to my partner for the first time and then my brain started banging pots & pans on my cerebral cortex to write a space western - and 25k later here's this. i hope you like it. i wrote something WITH A PLOT please clap clap clap clap. 
> 
> the worldbuilding for this is somewhere in between the outer worlds and the expanse and cowboy bebop and firefly minus the civil war revisionism. no i DON'T believe in exposition. figure it out yourself xoxo
> 
> title's from "city middle" by the national - "take me to the nearest city middle where they hang the lights / where it's random and it's common versus common la la la"

By the time he’d lived through twenty rotations, the loosely variable measurement of years supposedly maintained to consistency by guilds and inner system governments, Michael could compile his life’s accomplishments into a list that began and ended with _ surviving. _It was only notable because it wasn’t true for many others, and the fact of his survival was a hundred instances of dumb luck as much as it was a tradeoff - his life for something much bigger. Something he’d never get back. 

He could think about it with an almost-mathematical precision; one moment part of a family, even if that family was complicated, a community, a culture. The sum of their parts, and one of their pieces. And the next - he was separated from all of it. Alone. 

Many people tried to escape Antar after it crumbled and fell like a slow-motion natural disaster. Most of them weren’t successful at it. Michael was. 

He was one kid with the gulf of a complicated and uncaring universe to escape into. He did that so thoroughly he began to believe that any vestiges of his old life and the people who might still remain - no mother, no father, but two mostly-siblings and their own connections - might never catch up. 

And then Max - stalwart, forward-thinking Max who sets rules and defines terms - and Isobel - intense, analytical, cutting and not worried who gets caught in the aftermath of her comments - found him. 

Michael was skinny and mostly drunk, working off a debt by accruing more debt, in a real shit-hole of a system far from much of anything. He’d run there because it wasn’t Antar. Nothing was, and nothing ever would be again. He’d run there and then gotten stuck as surely as he’d been marooned. Until Max and Isobel found him.

They found him like long-forgotten promises always said they would. And better yet, impossibly - they had a ship. 

A class-four Airstream clunker, a real bucket of bolts and old paint jobs and battle scars, flying only through a combination of optimism (Max), willpower (Isobel) and duct tape. Michael took one look at it, and fell in love. 

It was long just the three of them, three survivors of the same slow-motion disaster and the only people in the expanse of space who will never ask each other to explain exactly what that means. And that was comfortable, if not always easy. Max let them appoint him captain, mostly because neither Isobel or Michael wanted that kind of responsibility. Isobel happily settled to first mate, all order and checklists and cleaning up Max’s decisions when they went wrong. And Michael kept the whole damn thing flying. Just the three of them - nobody to answer to, nobody to ask. Not always good, but always great. 

But times are changing. 

Aren’t they always? 

The world is getting worse, like old-timers on Ceres like to say, and it’s only funny until you head to the next world and the next and the one after that and see the same thing everywhere. A hundred planets, all getting worse - if they aren’t getting eaten.

* * *

“We’re here,” Isobel says, “because DeLuca says she’s got a job for us. And we need to restock. Doc needs medical supplies. You need new conditioner for - whatever is happening up there.” 

She pokes at Michael’s head of hair suspiciously. Coming from the ship’s own gravity to the artificial gravity well of a human-made habitation ring like Kalidasa Station always wrecks the consistency of his curls, but he doesn’t bother pointing that out. Isobel successfully mind-whammied their crew right through a weapons checkpoint, so she can say whatever it is she wants. She looks pretty and happy, with her hair tied over her shoulder and her rather severe flying jacket unbuttoned, and Michael likes that look on her. 

“Try and behave yourself,” Max says, trying for stern and missing. Michael clips him on the shoulder with his fist and smiles and promises nothing. After their last job - and the one before it - Max has no room to throw his weight around. 

“Where’s the fun in that?” Isobel says breezily, striding past both of them into the crowded domed pathways that pass for streets on Kalidasa. 

“If this next one isn’t fun,” Michael says, just to make sure they all understand him clearly, “I’m jumping ship.”

“You’re always threatening to jump ship,” Max says over his shoulder. “Should I plan to contract another mechanic for two months? Warning might be nice.”

“Maybe I’ll just mutiny,” Michael says, and Isobel shakes her head and smiles, her universal signal for _ Don’t push it. _

This was one long haul in a string of long hauls, the tedious and low-paying kind that seem to be the only sorts of jobs Max wants to take these days. Michael wants to eat a meal not prepared in their tiny galley kitchen, to down a drink not brewed in their tiny gallery distiller, to fuck someone he doesn’t know, and to sleep for a solid day. Not necessarily in that order. They’re on Kalidasa to inquire after a job - and if it’s not one that can even loosely be described as _ adventurous _ or _ interesting _ or at least _ paying well _\- Michael will do a runner. He’s done it before. 

Still, he takes a moment to take in the light and sounds and crush of people in the main hub. Spices and fried food and the distinct vinegar-liquor tang in the air, voices arguing and yelling and laughing in a hundred different languages; people come and go and live and die in the big metal ring and Michael loves the fragility of that existence. The tenacity of it. It’s never quite the same planetside, where basic necessities like water and air seem taken for granted, or used as leverage. And he still remembers what that felt like, refugee camps and inadequate aid and the cold, the cold, always the cold. 

He’ll take the artificial any day, and a decent temperature control system. 

Next to him, Isobel bumps his shoulder like she’s read the direction of his thoughts on his face - always a plausible threat. Michael winks at her, and lets himself be led through a side alley, around a corner and into the entrance of the bar that’s their destination. A neon sign blinks steadily in the front window.

The Wild Pony’s a grimy dive, the kind only found in sprawling anti-corp stations like this one. It’s decked out in garish Earth-retro decor, and the drinks are bad, and the music is loud, and somebody is always two shots away from throwing a punch. The woman who runs it takes great care to keep it that way. 

“Hey strangers,” Maria DeLuca waves the three of them over, shoves someone off a stool to make room so Michael can set his hat down on the bar. “Been a minute since this crew has darkened my door. Wasn’t sure if I should be throwing a party or a funeral.”

“Feeling the love, DeLuca,” Michael props his elbow on the bar and grins at her, the kind of cocky all-teeth smile designed to make her mad or take her to bed. Jury’s out, day to day. Maria is all dark eyes and dark curls with colorful beads in her ears and her hair and the hem of her skirt. She can drink any sailor passing through the outer systems under the table, and will swindle, stab or steal from you the second you even think about causing trouble in her place. And for some reason, she likes them. Tosses them a lot of work when it comes their way, and never overcharges on the drinks. Michael privately thinks it’s something to do with Isobel.

With perfect timing, Isobel smiles sunnily across the bar counter. “We’d all like a drink,” she says, “and then we’d like to hear exactly what this interesting offer of yours consists of.” 

Maria’s smile goes a little sharp. “Meet me in the back room,” she says, “and I’ll get you both of those things.” 

“She didn’t give you any details?” Max asks, as Michael tosses himself across a couch in the back room of the bar, usually reserved for business conversation or even less clandestine dealings. 

“No,” Isobel says. “But it can’t be like that mess on Ceres, can it? Oh, right. That was your decision. Captain.” 

Max sighs, the worn chambray of his shirt stretching across his shoulders as he leans on the table. “How long are you two going to keep ribbing me about that?”

“As long as it keeps being funny,” Michael says, then turns when the door opens behind them. Maria bumps it open with her hip, carrying a bottle and a stack of glasses. “Drinks!” 

“Smoke ‘em while you got ‘em,” she says, setting the bottle down. “I know your bar tab, mister. This is to share. Ice? Liz?” 

She slides into a seat across from Isobel, and it’s then that Michael notices she didn’t come to meet them alone. The seat across from Max gets occupied by Liz Ortecho, a pretty bundle of trouble and scientific detail in sensible heels. Few years back, she’d needed a ride very badly from an inner system tech lab, and Maria had begged them to pick her up without revealing the reason she’d been in such a hurry had to do with the million-credit corporate secrets she’d smuggled with her on her way. Michael likes her because she’s smart as hell and tougher than she looks, and any corp defector is a friend of his. Max likes her for other reasons. Ones that mostly result in his agreeing to run costly errands for her for free. 

Michael’s just thinking that this isn’t looking to bode well at all when a second unexpected person finds the unoccupied seat across from him. Unexpected because they’d just parted ways with him a half hour before and he is, technically anyway, a member of their crew.

Max is frowning into his whiskey. “Doc,” he says, “you know you can just ask us a favor, right? Pretty sure collectively we owe you that.”

“You won’t be saying that,” their on-ship doctor says, tipping whiskey into his own glass, “when I tell you what it’s about.” 

A year ago, Liz had called them up out of the blue and asked if they’d ever considered taking on a resident ship doctor. Asking because she knew a guy who could sew a thumb back on in his sleep, looking for a gig without a fixed address. “A guy” ended up being a Central-trained-surgeon-turned-small-town-doctor named Kyle Valenti. He agreed to occupy the unused med bay in the ship for a minimal cut in profits, as long as they keep him stocked in medical supplies and leave him his own open comms channel, no questions asked. 

He’s teeth-whitening-advert handsome, and just witty enough to keep up with Isobel without ever turning mean, and good both in a routine physical and a crisis. Keeps his hands steady, not bad in the kitchen, tells outrageous stories about his time as a resident med tech, and runs five miles every morning on the perpetual motion machine he installed in the loading bay of Old Faithful. 

Michael hates him, on principle. 

“Go ahead Kyle,” Maria says, bumping his shoulder with hers. Michael was largely unaware they even knew each other. 

“I want to hire you,” Kyle says, his eyes flicking from Max to Isobel to Michael and back, “to pick up an acquaintance from a Central military base and get him back here in one piece.” 

“Okay?” Max is frowning more. “Can’t say I love the idea of flying in Central airspace but that doesn’t really warrant this song and dance.” 

“That’s because Kyle is downplaying the situation just a little bit,” Liz says, and smiles. Max smiles back, dopily. Isobel, unfazed, clears her throat. Michael, primed to say no to Valenti by default, is beginning to realize his play; Max will hear Liz out no matter what, and Isobel will listen to anything presented like a job. 

“Maybe the doc ought to explain,” Michael says, and everyone looks down the table at Kyle until he sighs.

“I’m talking about my best friend,” he says slowly, seriously. “We grew up together. Liz too, really. Maria - don’t actually know how you two met, Maria - “

“That’s too wild a story for this conversation,” Maria says primly, “and it’s not important right now. If I were you, this is the point of the story where I might try to sugarcoat a little bit? Make this go down a little easier?” 

“You want me to lie?” 

“You all know I can read minds?” Isobel says, looking at her nails. “So either come to some kind of point, Valenti, or I’ll yank it out of you. Your friend. What’s he doing on a Central military base, and what’s that got to do with us?” 

“He’s a CMI pilot and intelligence officer,” Kyle says, and winces. 

“You want us to go after some CMI jag?” Michael blurts, nearly toppling his whiskey. “Not for all the fucking credits in the black, sawbones.” 

“And,” Kyle talks over him, glaring, “he’s spent the last four years smuggling information out of military intel databases to concerned people and communities who might find their plans and research and, oh, weapons schematics rather interesting.” 

Michael shuts his mouth with a snap. That’s a surprise. He’d been guessing Valenti’s somewhat ambiguous answers about why he dropped a promising inner system medical career to muck around on the rim had a malpractice suit or a drinking problem behind them, but this is much more interesting. And unexpected. 

“He’s been at it about two years longer than any of us is comfortable with,” Liz says, picking up the thread, “and the three of us have been waiting for something to go wrong.” 

“And let me guess,” Isobel says. “Something has.” 

“CMI intel have been looking for an inside man for a while,” Kyle says, “and he suspects they suspect him. Three days ago, he called me to say he’s sure of it. We’ve got to get him out before something bad happens.” 

“So this information,” Isobel says, leaning forward. When she does, it gives Michael a clear view of Max’s face, which is stony. “Where exactly does it get smuggled to? Across cleared comms channels in Airstream class cargo ships, maybe?”

“More like people like me,” Maria waves her hand, bracelets jangling. “Also not important right now. Are you three going to help us, or not? We’ll pay.” 

“Doc,” Max says, looking uncomfortable, “you know that we don’t right get ourselves mixed up in politics. As a rule. It could make our lives very complicated if Central caught wind of three Antaran refugees wandering where we’re not supposed to be. I don’t think we can. You understand.”

“That’s about what I expected,” Kyle says, “and I understand. You and yours come first, but - “ 

“We can get you in contact with some other people who might be able to help,” Max says, slowly. He reaches for Liz’s hand and she yanks hers away, scowling. 

“We can pay,” Maria repeats, her jaw getting hard. “Double, even. Maybe you see why we can’t just trust any asshole with a bird to do this.” 

“Forget everything he just told you about it,” Michael leans across Isobel to jab his finger at his brother, “and imagine if this was just a simple pickup job with good pay and an inconvenient rendezvous point. You wouldn’t be saying no to that, would you?” 

“It’s not that,” Max says, almost pleading, “but what if it doesn’t stay simple? We can’t afford to have our ship attached to runaway CMI spies and leaked intel. It’ll put us in danger. You. Isobel. Our ship. I’m saying no.” 

And that - after three months of long-haul drivel and cramped quarters and drudgery - is the very last thing Michael wants to hear. 

“You’re fucking kidding me” he says, standing up so his knees bump the table. “We’re being handed a golden opportunity to fuck over Central, to do the grand, heroic right thing, and to get paid doing it - and you wanna turn it down?” 

“Michael,” Max says, in the tone of voice he thinks is placating but really just makes Michael madder, “you know better than anyone I got no love for the powers that be but we agreed a long time ago that it’s dangerous - “

“Oh sure,” Michael snaps, rolling his eyes. “We agreed - meaning you said, and Iz and I nodded along. And it sure was a long time ago. Things are changing. You can’t spit without getting tangled in Central bullshit these days. And anyway, you’re the one who wanted this guy - “ he points at Kyle “ - along for the ride, which makes him part of this crew too. He didn’t agree to those terms, did he?” 

“Since when do you care about doing the right thing?” Max says, taking the bait. He looks vaguely embarrassed, like he doesn’t want to get caught fighting like this in front of other people but he’s unable to stop. Michael always knows how to wind his brother up.

“I don’t,” Michael says. “I care about getting paid, and fucking over the big scary corporate government that ruined our home and tries to run the lives of half the galaxy. What’s the next step? Never flying through airspace that might contain some political turmoil? Throwing the guy who sewed my thumb back on out an airlock because he’s moving Central intel to rebel organizers or whatever the fuck? We’ll all go broke, and I’m gonna go fucking crazy.” 

“Hey,” Kyle says quickly, “I am not breaking any laws - except a few mild copyright infringement stipulations. It’s not illegal to archive medical research Central doesn’t want the public to know. Yet.” 

“You’re a coward,” Michael yells, ignoring him.

“And you’re a reckless idiot,” Max snaps back. “Come on, Isobel. Help me out here!” 

Isobel is frowning, first at Michael then at Max. 

“I think we should take the job,” she says, finally. 

“Iz?” Max glares at her. Michael can feel him reach out to her in the mindspace the three of them all sit on the edges of, as much twin ESP as it is genetic memory - and Isobel shuts him down hard. 

“Michael’s right,” Isobel says. “We’ve followed that rule for a long time but it’s going to get harder. Especially when a friend is asking us to break it.” 

“Are you serious?” 

“And Max is also right,” Isobel turns to Michael, “that there’s a lot of risk in this. I think we should do it. But I won’t go into it without an insurance policy.” She looks at Kyle, then Liz, then Maria across the table. “If this goes wrong, I need a monetary assurance you’ll set us up to scrub the Old Faithful, change her name, serial numbers and appearance if we have to. This won’t land back on us.” 

“Yes,” Liz says immediately, “absolutely.” 

“Then I’m happy,” Isobel says decisively. “Michael, you happy?” 

“Right as rain,” Michael says, surprised and satisfied. At the other end of the table, Max pushes his hands through his hair and sighs. “You gonna throw down the Captain card? If you do, go ahead and find yourself a new mechanic for a few months.” 

“Guess I’m outvoted,” Max says, which doesn’t really answer the question. “The rest of my damn crew wants to pick this guy up, then we pick him up.” 

"Thank you,” Kyle says, leaning across the table to extend his hand in Max’s direction. After a second, Max takes it. There’s something almost smug in Kyle’s jaw when they shake hands that’s not there when Kyle turns to Michael. "Thank you."

“Seriously,” Liz says, batting her big brown eyes in Max’s direction. Michael watches him go all gooey on a dime, probably already rewriting the whole exchange in his head so he can prove he’s in the right to her later. “We don’t know how to explain what this means.” 

“With cash,” Michael says. 

“You got it,” Maria shakes her head, and they clink glasses. It’s nice to have someone around who isn’t a sentimentalist. “And, listen you three. I know you’ve been talking a while about hiring someone on to fly your bucket who actually knows what they’re doing. Al’s a stubborn sonuva with a questionable sense of self preservation, but he’s a crack pilot. Just sayin’.”

“This guy’s really lucky,” Max says, “to have people like you looking out for him.” That’s the clincher, Michael knows. He sees it coming. Sometimes he resents the fact that Max would do anything for the two of them, even if they don’t want him to. Other times he doesn’t know how to voice what it means to him. 

“What’s this guy’s name, anyway?” Michael hits the dregs of his drink, letting the argument fade and the sounds of the bar and the station filter in around them. Tinny honky-tonk music from the next room, someone yelling in a language he doesn’t speak, the always-present rumble of distant engines and life-support systems like a second heartbeat. “Your crack pilot you wanna bend heaven and earth for. He got a name?” 

“Sure does,” Kyle says, sloshing more whiskey into his glass, then passing the bottle to Michael. “It’s Alex.” He smiles winningly, all relief and planning and good cheekbones. “Alex Manes.” 

Michael drops the bottle. 

Not real glass, it bounces but doesn’t break, spilling amber liquid across the tabletop and down Michael’s front. Isobel yells, and Maria mops at the mess with a rag and Michael registers none of it. 

The laughter of his crew spins around him with the music, the station’s lights and sounds and the engine passing him by. Michael feels himself get pulled back, and back, and back - a place, a time, a man. A memory. Michael had fallen hard and swift and real in one perfect month that ended like a smashed bottle, real glass - all fractures - and almost two years later he’s still sweeping up the pieces. 

Alex Manes. 

Michael knocks the rest of his whiskey back, and feels like he's drifting in the black.

* * *

There’s a pattern to things, a bad habit most people shake by adulthood that Michael and Max - deprived of wholesome childhood bonding experiences in favor of the war-ravaged kind that solidify you forever whether you like it or not - haven’t grown out of. Max, desperate for stability, wants control. Michael, with nowhere to point his anger, gets claustrophobic. Isobel mostly lets them blow up in each others’ faces, which they do spectacularly. 

Michael’s only real recourse when he can’t stand the sight of Max or Isobel or the ship or the engine or the inside of his bunk or the view from the cockpit for another second is to catch the first cheap ride to a distant star and post up there long enough to get bored, get into serious trouble, or get picked up again. Call it a bender or a breath of fresh air. 

The reason for Max and Michael’s argument that had led him to passing thirty-four completely surprising days on the asteroid-moon called Adana 3 was so routine that Michael forgot the specifics as soon as they happened. Variations on the same theme; a power struggle, two perspectives that will never align stuck in a metal tin can together. So Michael threw his belongings into a bag, put on his hat, and hitched a ride in a random direction. 

He’d descended on the dusty, backwater rock like a hurricane. Remarkable only because of its location; an asteroid somebody had dropped a gravity shield around ages ago before realizing the whole setup was trapped in a slowly decaying orbit around a much larger gas giant. For half a rotation, the thing loomed in the sky over the little settlement like a swirling red eye. It got closer every year. Some day, the whole contraption would end up sucked right into it to vanish forever. 

Michael liked that. It made for a good drinking atmosphere, and people who gave almost less of a shit than he did about swinging fists for little to no reason. That gave him something to do while he waited. Waited for himself to get bored, for Isobel to show up wearing her _ the two of you will get along or so help me _face, for something key to break in the ship beyond Max’s budget to repair, or for something to go wrong. It went down in different ways, on different days. 

So Michael, three days rockside sitting in the seediest and cheapest watering hole available, was waiting - and drinking - and dodging a fist and a bottle being thrown with force right at his head - when he met Alex Manes. 

Four big men, angry at the way Michael was running his mouth. Blood high, in his element, he dodged and weaved around a battered shuffleboard table. Ignoring the furious bartender. Aware only of the distance between him and the huge man with the bottle in front of him, the shatter of glass over his shoulders, the fist on his jaw, the boot on his ribs. Michael fell forward, glancing off the table and then under it just to be grabbed by the collar and shook. 

“Gentlemen, I think he’s had enough,” a voice said somewhere behind them. The man holding Michael by the collar strongly disagreed. Michael saw the series of events that followed in pieces, his own swimming head unable to capture the whole picture. 

“Suit yourself,” the voice said. Michael felt himself fall. There was a scuffle. A broken pool cue. A pair of hands grabbing the front of the huge man with the bottle, knocking his face neatly against a doorframe, lowering him to the ground. Hands on Michael’s shoulders, around his waist. “Sorry about the mess,” - and then Michael was being dragged out of the bar and into the street. 

He gasped in chilly dusk air, staggering until he was let go. The man who had come to his rescue stared at the sky, then at the street, then at Michael. It wasn’t until Michael straightened up, ribs aching, that he got a real good look at him. 

Dusyy boots, and shoulders under a long black jacket that sat too casual to really be casual. Dark hair tumbling over one eyebrow, a jaw like a question, an expression that might have been a smirk. And a pair of dark eyes that, when the alighted on Michael, filled with a razor-sharp intensity, curious and calculating and warm. 

Michael had no idea who he was. He wanted to. 

“Who the fuck are you, then?” he managed, spitting blood into the sand. “You throw weight like a military man. Want me to be grateful, private?” 

“That usually how you start conversations with people who save your ass?” A lift of one of those eyebrows. Michael felt something near to panic, or want. 

“Here, I’ll start. Call me Guerin. You didn’t have to do that,” Michael said, wiping his chin and his teeth. He resisted the urge to scrub at his tongue, the blood from his split lip tangy and unpleasant. “Can take care of myself.” 

“Sure,” the man said, shrugging. “I mean, you were doing great. Four against one, those aren’t great odds, but I’m sure if you’d fallen down again you would’ve tricked them eventually. Call me Alex.” 

“What the hell’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” Michael asked blearily, sliding surely into sober with each second. 

The man - Alex - smiled with teeth. “Nothing much,” he said, and Michael could tell that was a lie. “Same thing as you, I suspect. Waiting around for something.”

“How do you know that’s what I’m doing?” 

Alex looked around them, the dust and the jagged cliffs and the curve of the setting gas giant in the sky, and shrugged. Michael was sober enough to notice how the neat motion moved his shoulders, the muscles there. 

“What else would anybody be doing here?” Alex asked, and Michael had no answer to that. 

“Thanks for the help,” he said, grudgingly. “Locals round these parts are not friendly.” 

“Especially when you antagonize them,” Alex said, smiling again. Michael couldn’t tear his eyes away from that smile. “I was at the end of the bar. Saw the whole thing.” 

“Which makes me look real roguish and dashing, right?” He wiped his chin again, trying for the bravado that walked him halfway through most doorways most of the time. 

“Right,” Alex said, mouth curling. “Whatever you say. Nice to meet you, Mr. Guerin. Don’t start any more fights without someone to keep an eye on you, alright?” He turned, all angles and movement, and stepped away from Michael into the street. Having just met him, Michael was suddenly furiously afraid to see him leave. 

“You’re not from here,” Michael called, suddenly frantic for any thread of talk to keep them standing in the street. “So what’s the hurry, private?” 

Alex paused, then turned to look back over his shoulder. “No hurry,” he said. “Might be that you can find me in the other bar in this town, the one we didn’t just get kicked out of, tomorrow evening.” 

“Might be?” Michael called, bold and drunk and bloody. 

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Might be.” Michael could see the crease of Alex’s smile in his profile for a second, before he turned again. Just a second - and there was no way to know he’d spend the next thirty-four days memorizing the specifics of that crease of a smile, the next nearly two years thinking about it. 

The next night Michael, sober and swaggering and nervous, posted up at the other bar in the little dusty town in the middle of lawless space. And a man in a dark jacket was sitting at the far end of the bar counter, waiting.

* * *

It takes them three days to finagle a transport and landing permit for Security Station 75621.2, the creatively-named CMI hub in the quarter. Somewhere between an armed security center, a weapons hanger and a prison, it’s about the last place Max would ordinarily let them approach. It takes them three days to fly out there too, and Michael spends the time drinking and pacing and calling Maria every few hours to see if their very fake credentials have come through yet. 

The station looms in the center of habitat structures and industrial rigs, an ugly symmetrical nucleus that’s crawling with artillery ships and small, fast-moving patrol cruisers. Like insects in a hive, Michael thinks, watching Isobel carefully maneuver them closer. 

“What the hell is going on there?” Max squints through the glass at the swarm of patrol ships. The whole thing seems frantic, light alarms flashing and blaring. “Everyone’s on red-alert.” 

“No idea,” Kyle, lingering at the entrance to the cockpit, immediately turns around. “I’m gonna get in touch with Alex.” 

“This has gotten complicated,” Isobel says dryly. “Hasn’t it?” 

“I’ve got him on the line,” Kyle says, shouldering his way past Michael to hover over Isobel’s shoulder, holding his comms device in one hand. It’s spitting static in a way that speaks to decoded messages and faulty connections. “And - it’s not great.” 

“Let me guess,” Max says. “There’s a problem.” 

“Repeat what you just said,” Kyle all but shouts into the device. “We’re here, you need to tell us where to meet you! And maybe why this place is swarming with armed police?” 

“Who are you yelling at?” A voice crackles through the speaker, warped and warbled. It could be anybody’s voice. It’s not. 

“Your ride, dickhead!” 

“Alright, jagweed,” the voice says, and Kyle rolls his eyes furiously. “There are docking bays underneath the station, not ideal but they’ll have to do. Security’s tight because there’s been, uh, a breakout.” 

It’s there, in that exasperated, competent tone. Michael knows it. Any uncertainty that this might be a coincidence of two names in a big galaxy is gone. It’s Alex. The one he met, and parted with. 

“A breakout,” Kyle says, bone dry. “Alex, what exactly created this conveniently-timed prison riot, then?” 

“Uh,” Alex says, “me?” 

“Why?” Kyle says like he’s practiced at asking these kinds of questions. 

“Well, when I got thrown in a military jail cell I thought it was the most efficient way of getting myself out again.” 

“Of course you did,” Kyle snaps. “Fine. Why not the upper docking bay?” 

“Uh,” Alex pauses, “because I barricaded myself in the basement of the station to avoid getting shot by all the armed cops looking for me. And I really don’t want to get shot. Hurry up, okay? The area’s clear now but who can say how long that’ll last.” The comms device crackles, then goes dead. 

“Who the fuck is this guy?” Isobel’s eyebrows are climbing up into her hairline. 

“This better be worth it,” Max pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“You don’t have to - “ Kyle starts, tentatively, and Michael interrupts him. 

“Of course we fucking do,” he says.”Right?” 

Max drops his hand. “We’re here,” he says. “And - it’s the right thing to do. Don’t start. Iz, get the ship moving. We’re on a schedule here, apparently.” 

Isobel dashes off, and Michael loads shotguns and lets himself get lost in the press of emotions and adrenaline. He’d relish this usually, the chance to let himself loose and wreak havoc. When that spirit’s in him it’s hard to send it anywhere else. But instead, he’s overwhelmed with nervous energy and a biting relentless anxiety. Michael loads his shotgun, reloads it, does it a third time. They’ll likely not have need of it. But it’s something to do with his hands. 

Their beat-up cargo hopper passes through rudimentary inspection at the checkpoint with so little trouble it makes Max scoff and shake his head; the airspace around the hulking security station is whizzing with patrol ships and alarms but they’re waved through like a technicality. 

“Bigger things to worry about I guess,” Isobel whispers. “Like your best friend, doc?”

Kyle pulls a face, and clutches at the doorframe as Isobel pilots them into a darkened loading bay tucked underneath the bottom of the station. The minute they’re docked, he rockets towards the docking bay doors and he’s out of them like a shot. 

Max motions at Michael to follow the doctor out of the ship which he does, reluctantly. Max himself lingers at the door, holding his gun. The docking bay is empty and quiet, shadows and shipping containers eating up line of sight. Michael’s nerves are a live wire. He’s surprised every electrical outlet in the vicinity isn’t crackling. 

“If you tell me we’re at the wrong fucking docking bay I’m throwing you overboard,” Michael hisses.

Kyle shoots him a look. “Where the hell are you?” he whispers into his comms device. 

“Waiting for you! Sorry that I’m not twiddling my thumbs in a lawn chair. Is that flying rust bucket what you flew here in?” 

“Just get over here,” Kyle says, smacking Michael on the arm before he can even begin to retort. He stands, poking his head around the crate they’re crouched behind, and Michael follows him after a second of silence. 

There’s movement across the bay, close to the doors and the barricade of empty metal containers. A shadows that materializes into the shape of a man; Michael holds his breath and waits for it to be the shadow of a stranger but it’s not. He can feel his own thoughts forming and racing faster than he can register them, three days of built-up energy crystallizing into this point, this inevitable connection. Will Alex remember him, and will he be happy to see him? Or angry? Or something else? Is Michael, himself, happy to see him, or angry, or something else? 

“Wait a minute,” Alex’s voice says through the speakers and Michael stops, unable to do anything else. Distantly, there’s the sound of sirens wailing in the airspace beyond. 

“Hurry up,” Kyle says, but Alex doesn’t move.

“Guerin?” he says. He’s across the room but his voice is close and Michael can hear the breathless surprise there like they’re sharing the same space, breathing the same breath. 

“Hey there, private,” Michael says. “Been a while.” 

“What?” Kyle says. Michael had forgotten about him for a moment. He opens his mouth, unsure exactly what’s going to fall out - and then three things happen in very quick succession. 

The door to the docking bay, in between the two of them and where Alex is crouched, slides open with an ugly scraping sound. A man in uniform is on the other side of it, holding a gun. He yells something Michael can’t make out. 

There’s the sudden rapid chatter of gunfire. Michael doesn’t even have time to dive behind the shipping crate. He expects to feel the hot bite of pain, but it doesn’t come. 

Across the room, Alex drops to one knee. 

And Michael loses his mind. 

He doesn’t think - he just moves, shoving Kyle aside to leap around the shipping crate and sprint across the distance. He throws out his hands. The shooter rockets backwards, crashing into the doors with a sick thump before slumping sideways against the wall. He slides and stumbles, out of control of his own momentum, right as Alex falls from one knee to his side. He’s clutching his stomach. He looks the same and different, beautiful, unshaven, tired, and beyond perplexed. 

Michael catches him before he hits the ground completely, like a reflex. He can see nothing but Alex’s face, wide-eyed and real. 

“What’s a guy like you,” Michael says, trying not to grin and failing, “doing on a rock like this?” 

“It’s kind of a long story,” Alex says. A muscle moves in his jaw and the crease right at the corner of his mouth is the same. He reaches up to touch Michael’s face and it’s only then that Michael registers his hand is smeared with blood. 

“Move, move, move - “ Kyle, suddenly behind them, bellows. He nearly collides with Michael’s back and shoves his arms aside to peer into Alex’s face. 

“Ow,” Alex says, looking almost indignant. “He shot me!”

“No shit!” Kyle is tearing part of his shirt into a makeshift bandage. “You’ve been shot before, Manes, it can’t be something you forget. Did that look like who I thought it looked like?”

“My brother, yes,” Alex says, and Michael’s registering the inconsistency of his breathing now, his pulse jumping in his neck, the blood already staining the back of the canvas fatigues he’s wearing. 

“Oh, great,” Kyle says. “Stop fussing. Can you get up? I’ll carry you if I have to but neither of us want me to throw my back out.” 

“Hi, Kyle,” Alex rasps. 

“Hi, Alex,” Kyle smiles, two inches from unhinged, and pulls him into a sitting position. “I’ll save the catch-up session for when you’re not bleeding on me, okay? Guerin, make yourself useful please and get him up.” 

Michael stands, powerless against Kyle’s businesslike orders. Kyle pulls Alex to his feet, slides an arm over his shoulder. Alex’s fingers clutch at Michael’s collar and the contact sends his head spinning again. 

“We’re coming in hot,” Kyle says this to Max through his comms, and Michael’s abruptly grateful for him and his near-insane level-headedness. It’s easy to forget he was a trauma surgeon. “Get ready to take off. And maybe shoot back, not sure what to expect.” 

“Since that door’s open,” Alex says unsteadily, “armed guards are going to storm this place sooner rather than later.” 

“Aren’t you popular?” Kyle says.

“It’s nice to be wanted.” 

“Not what I wanted to hear,” Max says through the comms, and across the bay Old Faithful’s cargo doors slide open. “But I’m ready.” 

“You gonna faint?” Kyle turns his head to look at Alex, who has to tilt his head to look back. It pushes his face into Michael’s shoulder. 

“Screw you,” Alex says. “I’ve had worse.” And he starts forward, pulling the two of them with him. He makes it two steps before he stumbles, limps, and the three of them tumble as fast as they can towards the ship.

“You sure that thing can get off the ground?” Alex wheezes.

Even running for his life, covered in someone else’s blood, Michael finds the space to feel indignant. “Sure is,” he snaps, “and when she saves your ass you’re gonna thank her!” Max turns to give them cover as Michael and Kyle haul Alex into the ship before slamming the door lock closed. They stagger, a many-limbed animal, ragged breathing lost in the sound of the engines before Max urges them forward again. 

“Iz,” he yells, voice echoing, “you gotta get us out of here now!” He sprints towards the cockpit, Isobel’s voice following his shout a second later.

“That’s an issue!” She bellows, and Michael’s heart sinks even further. 

“Help me get him up the ladder,” Kyle says, jaw tight, and together they haul Alex up rungs with blood-slick fingers. His face is drained of color, grip on Michael’s shoulder iron-fast. 

“I’ll go - “ Michael points towards the cockpit, releases his grip around Alex’s waist so he sags into the wall. “Why the hell aren’t we moving?” 

“I’ll get him to the med bay,” Kyle says.

“No,” Alex chokes out, eyes flying open. “Get me to the control room.” 

“Absolutely not!” Kyle starts to pull him away but he’s stopped, again, when Max slams into them. 

“We have a problem,” he repeats, so all four of them stumble into the cockpit, crushed against the pilot’s seat and the wall. Isobel, sweat shining on her forehead, is flipping through scanner screens with urgency. Her eyes widen at the sight of them, the smear of blood on Michael’s face. 

“What did you do?” She snaps. “Never mind. I’m looking for a flight path but there’s no clear shot. Something is in the way. Right between us and the gate, look.” 

Michael’s expecting the scanner to show another ship, or even several but it’s spitting up static, a wave of distortion that’s throwing their neat flight path into chaos. 

“Gravity cannon,” Alex says. His eyes are open, glazed, and every tendon in his neck is standing out. Kyle is clutching the wound at his side, hard. “They don’t want us to hop this rock. Is this bird stuck in auto? You have to throw her in manual and burn, hard, exit around the back. It’s the only way.” 

Isobel looks at him helplessly. “Not unless I can sit here and read a how-to guide about it.” 

And Michael knows, certainly, what has to happen. He meets Alex’s eyes across the cramped space. They’re too shiny, too bloodshot - but focused, bright and intense. 

“Can you fly her?” Michael asks. 

“I can fly anything,” Alex nods tightly, and starts towards the controls - or tries, because Kyle is still holding him fast. “Let go of me, Valenti.” 

“No,” Kyle says, “you’re going to the med bay and I’m going to stop you bleeding to death, Alex!” 

“No,” Alex glares at him, “I am going to get this rig off the ground and through that gate, and you’re going to stay here and make certain I don’t bleed out while I’m doing it, because if I don’t, we’re all going to rot in a military prison if we don’t get shot right out of the sky and it won’t much matter if I live or die then. Right?”

His voice turns commanding, even through the pain, not loud but certain and sure. Kyle nods, once. 

“Right,” he says, and he lets Alex go.

“Then get out of the way,” Alex says, and all but falls into the pilot’s seat as Isobel leaps to her feet. She grips Michael’s shoulders like a reassurance, before letting him go. Alex grapples at controls, flips switches without hardly looking at them as Kyle grabs at the wound on his stomach. 

“Stop moving,” he says.

“Don’t hassle me,” Alex bites back.

“Guerin, get over here,” Kyle motions to the other side of the pilot’s seat, and Michael hovers, blanches, until more instructions are barked his way. “Get your arm against where he’s bleeding and lean in, hard. You’re a fucking asshole, Alex Manes - “ 

Michael does as he’s told without thinking, shoving his elbow across Alex’s middle and pressing there with all his might. He can feel Alex’s rapid breathing against his own straining forearm, his pulse too close to the surface. Alex hisses with the pain, breath hot against Michael’s neck and hands still flipping switches. Michael is familiar with Old Faithful’s ins and outs, her aches and pains and all the finicky external details that make a ship fly smooth, or not. But Alex is bypassing structures and programs with the flick of a shaking wrist. Hands on her like he’s flown the ship a thousand times. 

“Everybody hold on to something,” he says, breathing unsteady, right as a rumbling from outside the ship indicates they’ve really got company. Max grabs the doorframe, Isobel the back of the chair. Michael holds on to Alex. “On your mark, captain.” 

“Just do it,” Max says, and Alex throttles the engine, cranks up five cylinders to white-hot roaring power, swivels the ship backward in one stomach-dropping swoop. The ship strains, pointed at an unnatural angle and primed to go. The moment stretches. Then, Alex jerks forward, dragging Michael with him, and throws his weight onto the throttle. The ship jerks wildly, stutters, then rockets vertical with a sickening yank of vertigo deep in Michael’s gut. Isobel shrieks. Kyle smacks his head onto the console and curses creatively. 

They spiral upwards too fast to be tracked, flip and dive around and backward, reorient so the sky is above then below then above again. For all that Michael loves her, the ship isn’t made for maneuvers like this one - so he always thought. Alex does it without effort, holding his breath. Michael’s fingers are slippery again, red and sticky. A jarring rattle is all the warning they get of the gravity cannon’s field, and then they’re speeding through the barricade, through the gate and into the open, empty, unmapped expanse of free space. 

Blackness rises up to meet them and it’s like a wide sea of relief, the kind that nobody can follow them into. Michael breathes out, arms trembling. Blood is soaking into his sleeves and down his wrists. 

“Didn’t know she had it in her,” Isobel says and laughs, touching the console with one hand. She sounds nauseous. 

“Well, Valenti,” Michael says, struggling to sit up without taking his body weight off of Alex’s abdomen, “you were right. He is one hell of a pilot.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kyle says, breathing hard, “Captain Alexander Manes.” 

“As of today,” Alex says, and he lifts the hand clamped around the throttle up to throw Kyle his middle finger, “I think I’m retired.” 

And then, only then, does he pass out.

* * *

It took Michael one long night to decide that, if the opportunity presented itself, he’d be ready and willing to let the mysterious man in the dark jacket fill any and all of his unoccupied time, whiling it away as he was on Adana 3. He decided this after one long night posted up in Adana 3’s other bar, watching Alex drink watered back whiskey and dodge his questions. He pushed, asking obvious ones, clinging to the facts such as they were. Alex was military, or had it in his background - this ascerned more from his bearing than from anything he actually said. He had a scar right above his eye, and touched it on occasion like a nervous habit. He had been born on an inner system planet, maybe even Earth, but he was well-traveled. He had a good ear for music.

It took Michael three long nights until an opportunity presented itself. 

“This is probably a very stupid idea,” Alex said. 

He said that, and the frowning set of his mouth said that, but his hand on Michael’s shoulder said something else. 

“Probably.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“Kind of the point, isn’t it?” Michael grinned, or tried to. He sounded unconvincing even to himself. He could pretend, though, that it might mean nothing. To get closer, he could pretend. But after just three days - Michael knew that it wouldn’t. 

The second night, they’d had a drink together. The next night, another one. Tonight - one more. The space between them had dwindled night to night to tonight and Michael felt it like engine heat, a promise of something. He wasn’t sure exactly what. Alex had the bearing of a military man, the dress of a smuggler, the tongue of a sailor. It was his eyes Michael couldn’t determine; they turned cold and calculating when Michael asked for more of his name, what he was doing there. They went soft when Michael made him laugh. 

So when the light vanished and Alex finished his drink and rose, Michael followed him into the street. Headed in roughly the same direction, this wasn’t a surprise. But Alex stopped, turning his head so Michael could see the corner of that smile. He waited there in something like uncertainty. And action wasn’t something Michael himself had trouble with. 

“Could use a nightcap,” he said, tossing the words to fall like an invitation of another kind. 

“I wouldn’t say no,” Alex said after a moment, and when Michael turned he followed him. He had to stop himself looking over his shoulder, check and double-checking that Alex was still there, still looking. He pushed open the door to the rented back room he was crashing in, paused there so Alex had to pause too. 

“This is probably a very stupid idea,” Alex said, and stepped closer. Michael could feel the heat of his proximity, the warmth gathered underneath his jacket collar and his clavicle, his throat. He stepped closer. That could be enough, watching the breath rise in his throat. He stepped closer. It was a stupid idea. Michael’s back hit the doorframe, Alex’s hands dug into his shoulders. 

Later, he can’t remember who closed the distance. He didn’t kiss Alex, and Alex didn’t kiss him. The ground just shifted, and there they were. 

Alex pushed him through the doorway, sudden purpose and action, closing the door. Knocking Michael’s hat off his head. Working his hands under the hem of his shirt to flatten them against his stomach. Michael was dizzy with the thrill of it, possibility and sensation and too many details flooding every corner of his mind even as he struggled to take them in. The press of Alex’s teeth against his lip, and his self-assured hands and the moments of hesitation and then release, tugging Michael’s shirt off and then just watching him until Michael kissed him again, invited him to slide his tongue into his mouth. 

That was what made Michael feel so right about it, something in his gentle hesitation. Somewhere else anonymous and adrift, he might have acted fast and purposeful - shoved Alex against the wall and dropped to his knees to end curiosity. But instead, he paused. Waited. Let Alex press him backward inch by inch, tumbled them both hand over hand onto the bed, over and under each other like a rhythm. 

Alex looked up at him, and then away and then back. Over and over. Michael pushed his knees open, holding his breath, dragging his unshaven chin over Alex’s knee and hip and stomach until he stopped breathing too. Over and over. 

They lay side by side in the lumpy too-small bed for a long while, as the night faded into early morning. Michael dozed. He opened his eyes again and watched Alex doze. He frowned in his sleep, his mouth twitching like secrets might spill out of it. Michael had the feeling he had secrets; his neat dodge of questions and hard facts made him sure. 

“Was that stupid, then?” Michael’s voice felt sandy, well-worn. 

Alex released a little laugh, nearly silence. “No.”

He opened his eyes, dark mirrors in the early morning-lit room. He leaned up onto his elbow with a rustle of blankets, tilting his head like he was sizing Michael up for something. 

“You’re thinking,” he said. 

“That obvious?” Michael stretched, noting Alex’s eyes follow his bicep. “About engines.” 

“Engines.”

“Did I tell you I’m a mechanic?” 

“I guessed,” Alex said. “From the calluses. That’s not what you’re thinking about.” 

“I’m just wondering,” Michael said honestly, “how I managed to run into somebody like you. People don’t come here for any reason other than to farm water, or stare at the sky in existential dread, I guess.” 

“You keep asking me that.” 

“I’m curious,” Michael said. “Wasn’t right expecting to run into anybody, here. Kinda the point.” 

“What are you doing here, then?” Alex touched his collarbone with his thumbnail, tracing it. The motion sent shivers across Michael’s shoulders. “Can I guess? You’re running drugs. Hiding because you were caught running drugs. Running from a wedding. You shot someone.” 

“Why’d you jump to career criminal?” Michael scoffed. He considered how to phrase it. “I’m having an argument,” he decided. 

“From a distance?”

“Yeah, it’s really passive aggressive. Now you go.” 

When Alex frowned, a little line formed between his dark eyebrows. He frowned, and his hand drifted higher up Michael’s shoulder like a distraction. “I’m on leave,” he said finally. 

Michael, not expecting that, burst out laughing. “On leave? Like, a vacation? Here?” Alex nodded. “This is about the worst place to take a vacation. I know we just met but man, let me haul you to Xerxes 6 for a couple days at least. It’s all beaches and free drinks. What the hell? Are you a monk?” 

Alex rolled his eyes, still touching Michael’s shoulder. He caught the hair at the base of Michael’s neck, and Michael leaned into the pressure. “No,” he said, and Michael noticed so clearly how he didn’t volunteer what exactly he was, or what he was on leave from. “My brothers think I’m climbing a mountain on Mars.” 

“But you’re here.” Michael arched his back.

“Yeah,” Alex’s hand stilled for a moment. In the early light, he was beautiful and doused in gold, motes of it caught in his hair and eyelashes and unshaven upper lip. He’d never wanted anybody so badly, especially not after that initial curious itch of a question got answered. 

Max was the romantic - Isobel the realist - Michael the cynic. Happens, when most of the people in the universe you’re related to die or leave you. He doesn’t know what to do with this overwhelming roaring affirmation, an almost sickening plunge towards something unstoppable. Like whistling in the dark, like the turnover of an engine, like the jerk right under his ribs before their ship kicks into hyperspace. 

“I’m waiting for a message,” Alex said, unaware of Michael watching the gold in his eyelashes and afraid to breathe. He said it like it might mean something. 

“What’ll you do when you get it?” Michael asked. The stillness was too much so he caught Alex’s wrist against his own throat, felt the movement of tendons there. Alex swallowed, eyes traveling down and down and down. 

“Then I’ll leave,” he said, and leaned forward to press his mouth to Michael’s mouth.

* * *

Max and Isobel set a steady and unobtrusive course back towards Kalidasa station and Michael retreats to his bunk. He pulls the bloody shirt he’s wearing off and hurls it aside, tries to calculate how long it might take for somebody to stitch a bullet hole closed in a man’s stomach. At least as long as it takes him to scrub the blood off his hands, his knuckles, his face. He does that until the water pump runs cold and his chin is pink and stinging. Then, he paces. 

Isobel knocks on his bunk door, a distinctive rhythm she uses to identify herself. She gives him a once-over when Michael swings the door open. 

“Max is keeping an eye on the radar for a while. I’m turning in,” she says. “Try and get some sleep.” 

“How’s our hitchhiker?” Michael tries not to sound too eager or obvious. 

“Kyle all but chased me out of the med bay when I poked my head in, so no idea.”

“Do you think we’ve really screwed ourselves this time?” Michael asks, for some reason. 

Isobel has a stance she adopts for sizing people up, an elongating of her already elegant posture. She doesn’t quite go there but Michael can tell she’s stopping herself. “No,” she says, finally. “I don’t. I think it was the right thing to do. Which means very little, coming from me, but it’s still something.” 

“Yeah,” Michael sighs. “Think you’re right on that.” 

“I’m also hoping it won’t come back to bite us,” Isobel adds.

“You’re right on that too.”

“Are you alright?” 

The question surprises him, though it shouldn’t. His sister relies on her astuteness, that razor-sharp streak of observation that’s half intuition and half literal telepathy. It’s kept them all alive so far, through a lot of odds. Michael can usually tell when she’s skirting the inside of his head, so this might be coming from the expression on his face and not the contents of his thoughts. 

“Still flying.” He doesn’t try to smile. 

Isobel reaches through the doorway to touch his face. Like all her gestures, it’s both sincere and brusque; her nails scratch at his chin a little but he doesn’t mind it. 

“Get some sleep,” she repeats, and then turns down the hallway. 

Michael doesn’t listen to her. He gives it another few minutes to be sure the door to her bunk has slid closed, and then he heads to the med bay. 

To get himself through the door, he brings along a bottle of above-average hooch he’s been hiding for a good reason; the bay of the ship set up as a medical station had largely been storage before they’d hired Kyle, and now he guards it with fervor, always yelling about sterility and organization. Michael expects more of the same, the doctor’s particular brand of effortlessly cheerful intimidation. Instead, he finds Kyle sitting on one of the metal benches with his head in his hands, half-dozing. He looks up when Michael steps over the rim of the hatch, his face bleary. 

Michael proffers the bottle. “I come bearing gifts,” he says.

“Oh,” Kyle rubs at his eyes. “That’s uh - unusually generous and considerate of you, Guerin.” 

“Been an unusual day, is all,” Michael says. He cracks the stopper and passes it to Kyle without taking a swig first, which is about as polite as it gets. Kyle doesn’t drink right from the bottle; he half-stands to rummage around in a cabinet and returns with two beakers. “Really?”

“They’re clean,” Kyle says, and sloshes booze into both. He sips, pulls a face. “Not bad, actually. Thanks.” 

“Don’t mention it.” Michael knocks his drink back, then stares into the empty beaker. “So, uh. How is he?” 

Kyle straightens a little, blinking. “Alex?”

“No, the other guy with the bullet wound in our med bay.” 

“He’ll be fine,” Kyle’s his face is unreadable. “I stitched him up and he’s on a course of painkillers and antibiotics to expedite healing. He’s out like a light right now. He’s had a rough couple of days. Idiot.” Right at the end, his voice goes fond. 

“You go way back,” Michael says, not a question. 

“Since birth, basically. Our fathers were old friends, we grew up together. How do you know each other?”

“What?” 

“I’m not an idiot, Guerin,” Kyle leans back against the bench. “And I’ve known Alex a very long time.” 

Michael pulls his best _ packing two pistols and willing to throw a chair at your head _mug. Kyle raises an eyebrow, unaffected. 

“Don’t know what you mean.” 

“Then you’re just taking up space in my med bay.” Kyle snatches the beaker out of his hands, stands and starts rummaging around in cabinets. “I’ve got a patient in the next room and I haven’t slept in a full day and you’re in my way. So get.” 

“What the hell, Valenti!” 

“You want to stick around, you talk. Otherwise, get gone.” 

“You suck.” 

Kyle shrugs, crosses his arms. “Not my problem.” 

“Hell and the black,” Michael grabs the bottle to pour more booze into his beaker, then throws himself back into his seat. “Your bedside manner needs some work, doc. Fine. Yeah, sure. We know each other. We - me and - “ his voice catches before he can stop it and he looks away, clears his throat. “Alex.” 

“Small galaxy.” 

“You’re tellin’ me.” Michael avoids looking anywhere by pouring more booze into Kyle’s glass. “Couple years ago, before we met you. Some off-chart asteroid full of moisture farms and not much else. He was on leave, I was doing some work there - “

“Pissed at your brother?”

“Inhale exhaust fumes. Yeah. We - met.” He leaves it at that, uncertain he can get any more out without totally giving himself away. But Kyle’s eyes widen anyway. 

“Shit in the black,” he says, leaning forward. “You’re kidding me. You? You’re Alex’s guy from Adana 3?“ 

Michael sits up too, like a snap, his skin crawling. “He told you about - “ 

“I mean, as much as Alex tells anyone anything. He told me he met someone who kind of did a number on him. I mean, there are a lot of scruffy mechanics in this system. Did not add that one up.” Kyle rubs his chin thoughtfully. “Huh.” 

His scrutiny is suddenly too sharp. “Alright, cool it.” 

“You want to check in on him?” 

Yes,” Michael stands up immediately, a reflex. 

“Cool it,” Kyle says, smirking. 

“You’re a dick.” 

Kyle stands too, setting his empty glass down. “Go on,” he says and pushes open the door to the next room. “Keep it down.” 

The room Kyle’s repurposed as a proper sick ward is dark and quiet aside from the beeping of machinery; it’s because of that void of silence that he can almost feel Alex’s gentle breathing. He’s lying prone in the hospital cot, eyes closed, an IV leading from the crook of his elbow. Breathing, gently. Going to be alright. Michael can’t help how he finds himself staring, almost desperate with it, like he’s quantifying evidence or searching for a missing tripped wire. The shadow of a bruise under Alex’s jaw, the dark sweep of his lashes under his eyes, his open mouth. The rise and fall of his chest. His clever hands, knuckles on his right a little battered. The line of his waist, his knees, his - 

“Uh, doc,” Michael says, shakily, “you do realize we, uh, left a little part of Alex behind?” 

“What?” Kyle pokes his head around the door and then realizes exactly what Michael is looking at. The hollow space, at the juncture of Alex’s knee. “Oh. No, that’s not a result of today’s activities. Thankfully. It comes off now.” 

He points towards the end of the bed and Michael notices a prosthetic limb, something complex and expensive and sleek. 

“What the fuck happened?” 

“Maybe don’t ask that one out loud when he’s conscious,” Kyle says, wincing. “He was in a firefight, a year ago. Ship went down. It wasn’t good. He’s recovering.” 

Michael’s throat feels like sandpaper. “Was it - “ 

“A close call? It wasn’t a far miss, anyway. I’m gonna try and get some shut-eye. Close the door when you leave.” Kyle turns and it’s only when Michael is sure he’s passed out of the med bay that Michael sits down on the edge of the bed. He feels like the strings holding his muscles tight and purposeful have been cut all at once. Boneless, useless, he barely catches himself. Alex, unconscious, doesn’t notice. 

The last time he’d sat on the edge of a bed Alex was lying in, Michael had perched on the end of it. Laughing, watching Alex try to keep from laughing himself. He’d run his hands up Alex’s leg, the right one, aiming for the tender spot right behind his knee. He’d first noticed it, six days in. It was day twenty-six. They’d had an argument or the edges of one for people who had only known each other twenty-six days. This was an apology, or what passed for one for people who had only known each other twenty-six days. 

Alex, a bruise under his chin and down a limb since Michael saw him last, breathes in a cramped hospital cot in Michael’s ship. 

They’d fought, the last day they spent together. Day thirty-four. And Michael had resigned himself to never seeing him again. 

The dead space inside a running ship like theirs is never entirely still; the engine hums, life support and exhaust and propulsion systems rattle. It blends into the background though, a comforting blanket of specifics. In that motionless space, Michael leans forward to brush the lank hair from Alex’s face. 

Alex doesn’t move, but that’s alright. His eyelashes shift, just a little. His chest rises. Michael sits there well into the night.

* * *

Michael remembers this - 

Some water farmer on Adana 3 got talked into lending them a junked-up speeder bike when Michael fixed the engine for him for free. It ran, barely, roaring like a volcano and spewing a cloud of black smoke and dust in its wake. Bandana wrapped around his mouth, Michael hadn’t minded. Hat on his head, Alex’s guitar on his back, he’d thought only of his arms around Alex’s waist as Alex kicked the throttle and steered them out of town. 

There, the land got stark and strange. There was still something beautiful about it, nearly impossible to navigate in red crags of stone and waving grasses that stood high against the purple afternoon. They left the bike on the road, knowing nobody would take it, and hiked over boulders and gulleys in the sun. Alex put a blanket on the ground like a question, stretching his arms up over his head towards the sky. 

When he looked Michael’s way, it was almost nervous. He got that way sometimes, even after twenty days. Like he was waiting for Michael to reject him, to turn away, to laugh or even to turn violent; Michael hadn’t asked but the edge was there. It made him wonder at Alex’s life off-leave, something regimented and hard and far from the molasses-slow creep of waiting time they’d found themselves in. 

Michael closed the gap in a slow and purposeful movement, his hand on Alex’s cheek. When he kissed him, Alex sighed into his mouth. His face was warm from the sun. When Michael peeled his dusty jacket from his back, his shoulders were warm too. The dust got everywhere here. It was easiest to ignore it. 

Michael drew Alex down onto the blanket, walked him flat onto his back so his hands framed Alex’s shoulders. He spent a long moment looking, just looking until Alex bit his bottom lip and dropped his eyes, which mean _ Come on, Guerin, _which Michael did. 

They made love in the sunshine, under the weird purple sky, and Alex said his name into Michael’s throat over and over until his words got swallowed by the space between them. 

After, Michael picked grass out of Alex’s hair and lay back, closing his eyes. 

“You’re like a lizard,” Alex said, smiling. 

“My internal temperature is four degrees higher than people with inner system ancestry,” Michael said, reciting old medical textbook nonsense. 

“Is it?” 

“I’m Antaran,” Michael said. He hadn’t meant to say that, nor did he mean to open his eyes and see Alex’s expression - but he did anyway. Alex’s face went tight. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, asking for no more context. That made Michael want to laugh, almost. Sorry for being born where you were born. Sorry for what that implies. 

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Alex leaned over, pushed Michael’s hair back out of his face. “You are,” he said, and suddenly Michael wanted to steer as far from that topic as he could. 

“You gonna play that thing or what?” he pointed at the guitar, lying forgotten to the side. Alex took the segue gracefully, reaching for it. 

“I can play you a wide selection of bawdy drinking songs,” he said, “and a few ballads.” 

“Dealer’s choice,” Michael said, laying back again. Alex’s shoulders moved as his fingers tightened around the instrument. He didn’t tell Michael what he started to play, and Michael didn’t ask. Really, the two were indistinguishable from each other.

When Michael left three weeks later, he scrubbed and scrubbed to get all the dust out of his clothes. It lingered there, for months. No matter what he did.

* * *

Michael stumbles back to his bunk eventually, all concept of time eaten by their travel. He sleeps for ten hours. When he wakes, it’s to the sound of talking on the lower level of the ship. Sound inside Old Faithful’s echoing storage bay rebounds; Michael jerks upright, then shuffles out of his bunk in slow-motion. He follows the sound of voices towards the ship’s central living space, down a ladder and through a cramped hallway. 

“So I want to get this straight,” Kyle’s voice is saying as Michael pauses at the entrance to the galley kitchen. He hears the clinking of glasses, the tell-tale domestic sounds of food on the table, and Isobel murmuring something to herself. “Head of Central security slapped a treason charge on you, and threw you behind bars after you quit?” 

“Well,” Alex’s voice says, “before I got thrown anywhere I told him in no uncertain terms to fuck himself. And then he arrested me. So for all intents and purposes, yes. I quit. And then got fired.”

Isobel cackles, which is enough impetus for Michael to come into the room. She’s standing at the stove and Michael focuses on her rather than the three men sitting at the bolted metal table. “I didn’t know you could quit working for Central,” she says. 

“It’s usually done by cutting and running,” Alex says, “but telling the head of security to shove a rusty pike where the sun don’t shine also does the job. I mean, committing treason didn’t hurt.” 

“Wish I could’ve seen that,” Kyle says wistfully. “Haven’t seen anybody tell the Sarge to fuck himself since - “

“Your dad’s funeral?” 

“And that wasn’t funny at the time. I missed out.”

“Put it in your calendar,” Alex says. “I’m sure Dad would love to hear from you.” 

“Michael,” Isobel says, “stop lurking and eat something. There’s a half-decent brew too, doesn’t taste too much like rotting yeast.” 

Michael thinks about arguing with her, but he’s starving. He snatches a bowl and a beer from the counter and stomps over to the table, tossing himself into the empty seat. Max is leaning back in his chair with his sleeves unbuttoned, and Kyle is halfway through a beer, one leg crossed over his knee. And Alex - 

He’s upright, pale and a little drawn but upright and breathing, sitting in front of a half-eaten plate of Isobel’s cooking in an unbuttoned shirt that probably belongs to Kyle. There’s a clean white bandage wrapped around his middle. His hair is mussed, faint shadows under eyes that turn serious and clear when they look Michael’s way. 

“You alright, private?” Michael asks. He can’t help himself. 

“Been better,” Alex says, not breaking his gaze. “Been worse.” 

“Hold on,” Max says, cutting through Michael’s thoughts. “Did you say _ Dad _?” 

Alex purses his lips. “Yes,” he says, shortly. Michael reads a clear fuck-off in his expression. Max doesn’t. 

“And the guy who shot you - that really your brother?” 

“You wandered into a classic Manes family argument,” Alex says, voice laced in bitterness. “Usually ends with somebody getting bloody.” 

“Do you think they’ll come after you?” Isobel leans one hip against the table. “Should we expect more of a shit storm?”

“It’s possible,” Alex says, seriously. “Probably not immediately. They weren’t expecting this, and that buys me some time. I scrubbed the station’s security monitors for any register or footage of your ship when I woke up. But I can’t rule it out.” 

“With your flying her, I bet we’re leagues ahead,” Max says. “You are one hell of a pilot.” 

“Central teach you to fly like that?” Michael asks. Alex turns to look at him, mouth turning.

“No,” he says. “Central teaches you to stand in a straight line and hit buttons in sync. Joyriding stolen puddlejumpers as a teenager taught me to fly like that.” 

“Don’t I know it,” Kyle says, and groans. 

“Point is, I should be thanking you three,” Alex says, changing the subject, “for dragging me out of something a lot worse than you were expecting to tangle in. I don’t want to make more trouble for you.”

“It’s no trouble,” Max says, and Michael bites his tongue and his temper. “What are you going to do now?”

“Hardly thought about it,” Alex says. “Best get out of this mess before I start looking for another one.” 

“You thought about commercial piloting?” Max asks. Alex’s escape stint must have impressed him, considering the turnaround he’s taken on the whole situation. 

“If you can make this ship sing, you could do that anywhere,” Michael says, mostly to see what Max will do with his agreement. Max raises an eyebrow. 

“You hiring?” Alex almost smiles. “Clearly you were in the market for ship’s doctors when you got landed with this guy.” 

“I just saved your life, jagoff,” Kyle says, and kicks his chair. Alex kicks back, and they scuffle back and forth for a second, brotherly, until Alex winces and Kyle leans forward in concern. 

“I mean they got very lucky,” Alex says, waving him off. “You’re a real catch, especially first thing in the morning.” 

“That is what you say to the guy who pulled a bullet out of your belly, yes. I sewed Guerin’s thumb back on, did I tell you that?”

“To be honest,” Isobel ignores all of this with the high-mindedness she adopts when ignoring Max and Michael’s tussles, “we’ve thought about it. Hiring a pilot. Not offering anybody a job, but I’m just saying we’ve considered it.” 

Something in Alex’s face lightens, then drops. “Best thing’s for us to get to Kalidasa fast as we can,” he says. “Then I’ll be somebody else’s problem.” 

Michael has to steel himself to look, really look. Alex Manes sitting in the galley of their ship, one arm resting on their table. He’d imagined something like this in a thousand loose-formed pipe-dream moments, always wondering how it could be if Alex had said yes to his half-baked idiocy, if he could find him again. 

And here he was, stitched up and eating Isobel’s questionable cooking and sipping beer, head tipped back to study the multi-color paint job Michael had added to the railing and ceilings three years ago in a fit of pique. Before long - somebody else’s problem. 

And Michael has no idea what to do with that. 

“I got shit to do,” Michael says abruptly, and he dumps his dishes into the sink and flees to the engine room. 

He tightens bolts, changes oil, crawls under the compressor to clean out filters until grime is caked under his nails and in his hair and the voices upstairs feel almost forgotten. It works, until he hears a step against the metal siding of the engine room. Not a cadence he knows, which is the kind of thing you get good at recognizing living in a small space with three other people. 

He slides out from underneath the compressor to find Alex leaning against the engine room door looking at him. At him, then away, then at the organized chaos of the engine room, and then back; Michael straightens and doesn’t bother to wipe grime from his face or his hands. 

“Your brother said I’d find you down here,” Alex says, which is stunningly obvious. Michael shrugs. “I like old ships like this. She’s been rebuilt, what? Four different times?”

“Five,” Michael acknowledges. “By the time Max got her. I wasn’t lying, you see. ‘Bout having a ship.” 

Alex sighs, and shifts against the doorframe. Clearly now, Michael can see how he’s favoring the left side of his body, a slight limp not just the aftermath of a bullet in his side. “I never thought you were,” he says. “I like old ships like this, like I said. It wasn’t that I didn’t want - “

“It was complicated,” Michael says, cutting him off, “like you said.” He forces himself into motion, throwing tools into respective bins and winding cable. 

“It was.” 

Michael wants him to say more than that, an acknowledgment or an apology. He’s also terrified of it. He has no idea what he’ll do if Alex does. But Alex doesn’t move or speak, so Michael is left wrong-footed and wanting, stepping into empty space. 

“Didn’t exactly think complicated meant busy stealing information from our evil overlords while building their AI systems, but I live to be surprised,” Michael says shortly. “I’m assuming that message you were waiting for had something to do with that. And not, I don’t know, fixing wheat prices on Ganymede.” 

“It wasn’t about fixing wheat prices on Ganymede.”

“Thought not.” 

“And the consequences of what I’ve been involved in are dangerous enough to make me run from my entire life,” Alex says, shaking his head. “I wasn’t lying about that, either.”

“Didn’t think you were,” Michael says, to be contrary.

“Okay,” Alex nods, mechanical. He stands in silence, stretching too long to be comfortable. So Michael grasps for the first available topic. 

“What happened there?” Michael points with his wrench at Alex’s leg, half an inch of molded fiberglass visible underneath his borrowed pants. “That’s new.” 

Alex looks down, then right into Michael’s face like a confrontation. “Stood too close to something that went boom,” he says. He raises an eyebrow, daring more questions. 

“That was stupid of you.” Michael winces. “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay. I’m adjusting.” 

Michael suddenly, badly, wants the right thing to say. Even just a platitude - how he’s glad Alex is alright. But nothing comes. The ship creaks and groans around them. 

“I just wanted to say thanks for the lift,” Alex says, after a moment. 

“No problem,” Michael says gruffly. 

“It’s nice to see you again,” Alex says, and he turns and limps back towards the ladder towards the upper deck leaving Michael staring in his wake.

* * *

Alex and Isobel put their heads together to chart a trajectory to their destination, a more meandering path than they took on their way there that avoids Central airspace and security checkpoints of any kind. Eight days, or ten if they’re particularly careful. Michael feels his brain instructing him to start clawing at the walls just thinking about it - forced closed quarters and Alex’s expressions and way too many watchful eyes. 

Surprisingly though, it isn’t so bad. Alex sleeps for two days almost straight, moving from the med bay to one of the unoccupied bunks on the upper level. He and Kyle spend hours in the med bay together, clandestine conversations behind a closed door. And otherwise he avoids pointing out any substantial changes to the ship herself, and pitches in the cooking rotation, and draws them all into endless games of poker and dice. 

That’s what they’re in the middle of, a longwinded game with the stakes set as washing-up duties, when the engines rumble to silence for the first time in days. Michael and Max and Alex and Kyle are sitting around the kitchen table with beers and a considerable number of dishes they’re all eager to lose responsibility for, and when the ship’s acceleration stops unexpectedly it jostles them all in their seats, makes Alex wince and press a hand to his side. 

“Why’re we stopping?” Max asks into the wall-mounted comm system that connects the kitchen deck with the cockpit, right at the front of the ship. 

Isobel’s voice is irate when it comes. “As I’m the only one doing work ‘round here, I say I can do as I please,” she says. 

“Maybe we should hire a pilot,” Max cuts his eyes Alex’s way. “Iz, really. Do I have to say Captain’s orders?” 

“There’s something on our scopes,” she says. “And I picked a nice, safe stretch of moon dust and debris to drift in, don’t worry.” 

Max shrugs, turns back to the cards. “It’s easier to just let her at it,” he says. “Your move, Michael.” 

“Don’t talk about your sister that way,” Michael says. “Draw.” 

“You talk about her like that all the time.” 

“And she’s my half-sister. Your twin.” 

“Why does that make it better?” Max rolls his eyes. “Doc, you go.”

“Draw,” Kyle says. “That why you have different family names?” 

“They’re a loose translation,” Max says, cutting Michael off before he can even begin. “If you want to be technical about it. It was easier, when the war ended. People ask fewer questions.”

“Made it easier to blend in, you mean,” Michael scoffs. 

Max ignores him. “But yes, same father. Different mothers. Kind of complicated. You have siblings?” 

“Kyle’s a treasured only child,” Alex says, smiling. He draws a card. 

“And Alex is the youngest of four. Watch yourself if you’re going for the last beer in his presence. Makes him turn feral. He bites.” 

Whatever remark Alex was preparing to throw back gets cut off by the sputtering blare of an alarm, one for proximity. 

“That a malfunction?” Max asks.

“I fixed it! I mean - it might be stuck again.”

“Hell and the black, Michael. Go look at it.” 

Michael glares. Max glares back. Michael throws his cards down onto the table so they scatter, and stands, ready to stomp to the cargo bay to wrestle with the faulty alarm panel. But he’s stopped by the hard clatter of footsteps in the hall. 

“Boys,” Isobel swings her head around the doorway to the kitchen, her mouth a hard line. “That proximity alarm is not a suggestion. We have a problem.”

“Again?” 

“Yes, Maxwell. Again. Cockpit. Now.” 

Michael and Max troop after her, long used to the knowledge that just listening to Isobel is much easier than the alternative. After a second, Alex and Kyle follow. And collectively, they all stop short at the sight looming through the drifting field of silvery moon dust and near-ship sized hunks of rock. Michael’s stomach sure as someone’s turned the gravity off. 

It’s a ship, a sleek armed frigate, a Central-made warship all lines and guns. Designed for conflict and mass-produced in clean lines and efficiency. It isn’t moving, just lingering at the edge of the field of debris. 

“What in the black is a gunner like that doing all the way out here?” Max asks. “A Central ship in unoccupied space can’t be a coincidence. Have they hailed us?” 

“No,” Isobel says tightly. “Turned off the scanner fast enough but if they get any closer they’ll probably pick us up.” 

“If they see us, they’ll board us,” Max says. “We’re in unoccupied space. Nobody to stop them.”

“They won’t board us,” Alex says, his words clipped. “They’ll demand you turn me over. And if you don’t, they’ll fire.” Four heads turn to look at him fast. “I know that ship,” he says rigidly. “It’s Dad.” 

“You sure?” Kyle asks, fists clenching.

“Tell me what you’re saying,” Max snaps, nearing authoritative. “Now.” Neither Alex or Kyle move for a long second, just staring at each other. Finally, Kyle clears his throat.

“Master Sergeant Manes,” he says, “is head of Central security in this quarter.” Alex nods, and Michael feels a spike of rage that almost hurts; not Alex’s way, exactly, but in Alex’s direction or the direction of his past and his family and his life before this moment. “But, Al - he arrested you. He’s got a warrant, right? That’s documented enough for even Sarge to follow next steps. Central won’t let him shoot you out of the sky without a trial. They’ll throw the trial and bury you in prison forever, but - ” 

“He doesn’t have a warrant.” 

“What?” 

Alex swallows, eyes hard. “Think it slipped his mind in his enthusiasm to pin me as the mole. He will shoot us down. Or he’ll board us, shoot me, and leave the rest of you to drift.”

“Let him,” Michael says, angry and itching for a fight all at once. 

“We can’t just go in guns blazing,” Max says, short.

“You literally hate everything that I love.” 

“This ship can’t punch through a shield like that, Michael! We have to go.” Max points at Isobel, face tight. 

“No!” Alex snaps. “Gun that engine and we’ll appear bright on their scopes. We have to wait. And we have to drift.” 

“You want to kill the power,” Michael says, catching on. 

“It’s the only way. I know that ship. She packs firepower but no smarts. We go black, they won’t see us. We’ll come up like one more chunk of space dust out here and they can pass us by. Captain, that’s my recommendation.” 

“So we throw the main power conduit and wait,” Isobel says. “Better than letting him get arrested. Max, what do you think?” She reaches for the red lever at the far end of the console, permanently jammed on. 

“Do not throw that level, Isobel!” Michael lunges for her hand. She shoves him away angrily. “Unless you want us all to choke on nothing. Main power’s routed to life support, which means air - “

“ - because your fucking ship’s still running on auto functions,” Alex finishes furiously, clutching his hair. “How’s it you never thought to restructure any of it, having it rebuilt five times and all? Running main power to life support. You know how dangerous that is?” 

“Well, we never had a pilot of your caliber grace her hold before,” Michael sneers, stinging. 

“That’s enough,” Max says. “Is it possible to reroute so we can run life support on auxiliary power and turn everything else off? Michael?” 

“Technically,” Michael says. “Gotta do it by hand. We’ll lose light, gravity, engines and weapons.” 

“So it’s possible? Yes or no.” 

Michael hates when Max pulls at that layer of calm efficiency and authority. He much prefers his brother operating on his level. “Yes,” he grinds out. 

“Then I think you should do it,” Max says firmly. “And I think you should hurry.” 

"You think we're just gonna sit here and let them comb this minefield for us?" Michael spits, near incandescent. He finds himself glaring Alex’s way rather than his brother’s, and steps up into his space to make his point. "I am not getting shot out of the sky without a fight, private. That's not the way I go." 

Alex looks at him coolly, a hair too close. "Do this and none of us go anywhere," he says. "Sometimes you have to play a long game, Guerin. Save the fights for the big ones that matter." 

"You're asking an awful lot." Michael knows that has two meanings, that now isn't the time. 

"I know." Alex doesn't flinch.

Michael wants Alex to ask it, wants to force the issue and hear the words right in front of everybody - _ Do you trust me? _\- revealing the thread between them. He takes a shaky breath, aware he's digging his nails into his own palms, aware of the seconds ticking by. 

"Fine," he says finally, and Alex's eyes soften just enough to notice. "It's the only way. Valenti, I need you to get to the cargo bay and throw internal power from there. I'm gonna jam life support from the engine room. Private, you're with me. Need you to turn off gravity propulsion by hand. Once gravity's down, Iz can kill the engines and power from up here."

"How can I know it's safe to power us down?" Isobel's eyes are wide. 

"We're either gonna start floating or choking, Iz, come on!" 

Isobel whirls to glare at Max, the pull of their connected thoughts almost tangible. Max shakes his head.

"You heard him," he says. "Get moving." 

The tension broken, they all leap to action. Alex all but pulls Michael out of the cockpit and together they sprint down the ladder and towards the engine room. At one end of it, Michael tackles the complicated set of dials that run the ship’s pressure, heat and oxygen; he throws them off auto settings, ignoring a series of worrying warnings and beeps, and forces a manual override. Alex tosses toolboxes out of the way in search of the steel cable that connects gravity propulsion to the generator, then tugs at it to no avail. Michael crosses the engine room in two strides, getting his hands around the cable too and throwing his weight backward. There’s a dusty crunch, Alex’s hands sliding under his, and then the cable jerks free. 

They’re both falling over when the gravity trips off and the momentum carries Michael up and backwards, twisting over himself and nearly cracking his head on the ceiling. The lights go out all at once, and the rumble of the engine dies a second later. Without it, the engine room’s temperature drops immediately. Michael’s toolbox lifts off, neatly organized equipment going haywire in the absence of gravity or cables. In the dark, things collide into walls and ricochet, a sudden cacophony to fill the space where engine sound should be. 

Alex grabs his wrist before he goes careening into anything else, anchoring himself hard against the wall with his other hand. Oppositional force throws them together uncomfortably fast, and Michael grabs at Alex’s waist without thinking and then doesn’t let go once he’s still for fear of losing traction again. They’ve twisted nearly upside-down, and Michael’s hair won’t stay out of his eyes without anything to keep it there. 

“Steady on, sailor,” he says. 

“I’ve got you,” Alex says. He sounds winded or uncomfortable and he’s much too close in the dark. The press of his stomach against Michael’s ribs is the only heat in the chilly engine room, his breathing the only sound.

“I know that,” Michael says, and Alex’s eyes are square on his before drifting around the dark room, unsteady. 

“Did it work?” 

“Guess we’ll find out if we get blown to bits,” Michael says, which is supposed to be light but falls flat and hard. Alex’s face twists at once, emotion wrought on his fine features like an unexpected dust storm. 

“That’s not funny,” he says, almost under his breath. The concentrated focus he’d been filled with when laying out his plan is gone. Even in the deadly silence of the ship’s interior Michael has to strain to hear him. “I’ve done this to you, I’ve dragged you all right into this - “ 

“Not your fault,” Michael says automatically. “What’s the deal with your father, anyway? Far cry from traditional family values.” 

“This wasn’t what I wanted,” Alex says, and even through the certain misery on his face Michael doesn’t miss how he skirts the question. “You’re all in danger because I’m on your ship. You - your ship, your family. I know what you stand to lose, being discovered. I should never have done this. I don’t know what I’ll do if something - ” he stops, starts again, his voice a grind “ - if something happens to you.” 

He’s trembling, almost imperceptibly. Michael can feel it in the fingers still around his forearm, in the press of his hand against Alex’s waist. His whole frame shakes with it and Michael pretends he doesn’t notice because he knows that’s what Alex wants, that Alex would never forgive him if he points it out. It’s like relief, that the fear is there, even if Michael doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s being handed something and he doesn’t know how to hold it. 

Alex’s eyes are wide, dark, almost wet at the corners. Lack-of-gravity propels them into the same orbit, a coincidence of mass and physics. Michael can act on it. That’s what he can do.

“The thing is,” he says into the hush, “I can’t speak for the other two - and I don’t think you really want me to - but for me? I don’t mind a little danger, now and again. Adventure is good for the soul. I’ve always thought.” 

Alex’s eyes drop from his eyes to his mouth, long enough for Michael to notice and to feel encouraged - spurred on. 

“Guerin - “ Alex starts then stops, his mouth open. 

“Will you let me - “ Michael doesn’t know what he’s asking exactly, but he wants permission, the acknowledgment. Alex nods, permission enough. Michael catches the back of his neck to steady himself, another point of contact against the directionless drift. Moves closer, and closer still watching Alex’s eyes. They slide closed, but Michael keeps his open to see how Alex’s eyelids flicker when his nose brushes the side of his face. Alex’s stomach jumps, less tremble than brace of anticipation and Michael makes himself go slow, so slow, far too slow considering the danger, the urgency, the looming problem. The space between them is alive and charged, vanishing by inches and molecules and seconds. 

Michael kisses him. Gently, and then all at once when Alex kisses him back. 

Clutching at Michael’s collar, he lets go of the wall so they drift and turn on an axis, around the place at the center where they meet. Once started, neither of them seem to be able to stop. Michael forgets why he was angry, why they’re in crisis. Anything but the way Alex is kissing him, the desperate sound Michael pulls from his throat. 

Then Michael’s comms device spits static; Max’s voice, like a neatly aimed bucket of ice water - “Where the hell are you?” 

Alex lets him go. 

Not attached to anything, Michael floats backwards until he can brace a hand against the floor-turned-ceiling. Alex touches his own mouth, breathing hard. 

“We should - “ he points. 

“Yeah,” Michael says, but doesn’t want to turn through the door without him. “Alex - “

“Not now,” Alex says. “Please.” 

He maneuvers himself towards the doorway, elegant his weightlessness. Touches Michael’s shoulder as he passes him, then moves on. After a moment, Michael follows him. 

With the power cut, the CMI warship is huge and illuminated through the cockpit windows. Michael leans into Isobel as the five of them peer at it, holding still like any movement might translate to something outside the ship. Kyle starts to speak once and Alex shushes him fast. With no engines or thrusters, their little ship drifts through the shimmering cloud of debris like it’s one more chunk of moon rock. It feels impossibly small inside, helpless and unmoored. There’s no way to say how long they wait. Hours or years. Then, suddenly, there’s an intense flash of streaming light and the huge warship slips into lightspeed, leaving them in the dark. 

Michael blinks spots out of his eyes.

“What do you know?” Max says, sounding stunned. “It worked.” 

“Not sure if I should applaud or scream,” Kyle says. 

“Neither, please.” Isobel pushes back from the console, nudging Michael as she goes. She claps Alex on the shoulder. “Go on, then. Turn her back on and get us out of here, I think you’ve earned it.” 

“She’s your ship,” Alex is frowning again. 

“And you saved her. You’re a maniac, but I think I’m starting to like you. Take the wheel. Please. I need to go lie down.” 

Alex pulls himself into the pilot’s chair, flipping two switches and reaching for the power lever. The lights come back with a hum, the engines a second later. “I’ll chart us back to Kalidasa,” he says. “Maybe one that’s even more cautious.” 

“We’ll get the gravity back on,” Max says, and gestures for Michael to follow him. 

The contents of every shelf on the ship have been let loose with the loss of gravity, so they push through the debris as quickly as they can. Kyle awkwardly pulls himself out of the cockpit, clutching at the ceiling. He doesn’t have the knack at zero-G navigation, which requires aiming your body more with your core than your legs. 

“My med bay’s going to be a shit show after this,” he sighs. “And I think I’m seasick.”

“Brace yourself, doc,” Michael says. “Turning the gravity on’s always rockier than turning it off.”

“Oh, great.” 

They leave him to his med bay and head below-deck, giving a shout shipwide for everyone to get seated before turning the gravity’s generator back on, as much as Michael wants Kyle to fall on his head. There’s a tremendous clatter, all their belongings crashing back to the ground. 

“Hell of a cleanup job,” Michael says, and Max laughs then lingers in the doorway as Michael tries to leave.

“You good? You got pretty angry in there.” 

Michael had been hoping they could avoid this particular conversation. “Yeah,” he says, “I’m good, I - it had me claustrophobic, you know. Trapped.” 

“I know,” Max says. He does know, and he doesn’t, because they lived through the same war but the fallout was so different for him and for Isobel. They’d been shielded from the worst of it for a while because of their legitimacy, their family, their wealth. Michael had just had day-to-day survival and limited space and the cold, the cold, the cold. “I didn’t mean for you to - “

“It’s fine,” Michael says again. He needs this conversation to be over, right now. “It was a smart move. Sorry I flipped out.”

Max reaches out to grab his shoulder. “Already forgotten, brother,” he says, a bastardized translation of a language none of them speak in public any more. He does it when he’s feeling apologetic, but Michael doesn’t mind it. “What do you think of Alex?” 

The change in topic, in language, nearly catches Michael at the truth. “Off the wall,” he manages. “But he’s a good pilot.” 

“He’s saved our asses twice in two days,” Max says approvingly. 

“Wouldn’t have had to if he wasn’t on the ship,” Michael doesn’t really mean it, and feels bad right after he says it.

“Not his fault,” Max says. “I know, don’t be too shocked. I can change my mind.” 

“Why’re you asking?” 

“I’m just thinking,” Max says. “Maybe we should seriously consider hiring somebody. If we’re going to run more jobs like this, ones that pay better. It doesn’t have to be him but - Isobel likes him and she doesn’t like anybody.” 

“I like him fine,” Michael says, “if that’s what you’re asking.” 

“I know,” Max says, and squeezes his shoulder. “I’m not an idiot.” 

“Maxwell,” Michael says, straight-faced, “go inhale exhaust fumes.” 

“Not today,” Max says and, chuckling, he heads back upstairs.

* * *

His thirty-third day on Adana 3, a stranger arrived in the dusty bar and got the whole town talking. Michael’d been there long enough, engrained himself in the community solidly enough, that they talked to him about the stranger like they hadn’t all been whispering something similar about him thirty-three days ago. A woman who wouldn’t tell anybody her business, they said. Sat in a corner and drank and didn’t speak to anyone. 

“I know,” Alex said, when Michael mentioned this in passing. Alex was the kind of person who valued information, so Michael wasn’t surprised. He was surprised by the tension in Alex’s face, how he was dodging Michael’s attempts to get him to take off his shirt. 

“Means trouble?” 

“She’s my contact,” Alex said.

“For your super-secret whatever,” Michael said, rolling his eyes. He’d been beginning to think it didn’t actually exist, whatever Alex claimed to be waiting for. 

“Yes,” Alex didn’t elaborate. “Stay out of the bar tomorrow. Alright?” 

He pulled on his coat and left Michael’s little rented room without saying anything else. They didn’t sleep together, the thirty-third day. And Michael didn’t stay away from the bar. 

He posted up there early, beating Alex and the baking afternoon heat. Drinking cheap beer and getting drawn into a betting game, he watched the corner of the room where a woman in a dark coat was waiting. She had fair hair and a hard expression on her face, and she didn’t look at him no matter how much noise he made. 

Alex came in an hour or so later, his coat buttoned all the way up. He stopped, seeing Michael, but turned without speaking and took a seat across from the woman. They sat like that, speaking quietly, for a long time. 

Michael stomped around the bar, and swore, and blatantly cheated at the game of shuffleboard he started until the woman he was playing against cursed him out. Alex didn’t look up, didn’t even shift. Head bent close to the woman in the dark coat, he spoke in low tones and both of their faces were urgent and determined. 

Eventually, she rose, taking the papers Alex passed her and tucking them all away into her coat. They shook hands, she glanced around the bar like she was casing the place, and then she pushed out the saloon door into the street. 

Michael slammed the weight across the shuffleboard with particular vigor just to make sure Alex noticed it; he was rewarded when Alex stalked over to him, irritated. 

“You finished with that performance?” Alex crossed his arms; something in the gesture made Michael remember he had brothers, might be well familiar with the lengths someone might go for attention. “Or would you like to throw a bottle at the wall?” 

“Nah,” Michael said, tossing the shuffleboard stick aside. “I’m all done here. Ready when you are.” 

Alex turned on his heel without saying anything more, heading for the exit with purposeful steps. That wasn’t the reaction Michael wanted, so he followed. Once started, it was hard for him to stop even though he knew how it seemed - _ Look at me, look at me - _and how childish it was. 

“So that was her, huh,” he said, narrowly avoiding getting smacked by the swinging doors of the bar. “Who you’ve been waiting for. Didn’t expect a woman - “

“I’m not in the mood for this,” Alex was still walking towards the little room he was renting. It fell across the street from the little room Michael was renting because there was only one street. 

“You in the mood for something else I can provide?” 

“That was her, yes.” Alex stopped short in the doorway, forcing Michael to either stop walking or run into him. “And she nearly left because of the commotion you were making, thinking you were causing a scene for a reason. So thanks for that.”

Michael laughed. “It’s really that life or death?” 

Alex stared at him, then turned all at once to throw the door open, leaving Michael to wonder if - yes - it was that life or death. Whatever it was. 

The room Alex was staying in was little and dusty because everything here was dusty, but he’d kept it near pristine, folding his clothes and making his bed and lining his boots by the door. He pulled a bag out from under the bed and unzipped it, began to pull things from drawers in neat movements. He was angry, Michael realized. Really angry. 

But, watching him pack in silence, Michael found he was too. Standing there and yelling _ you're leaving _felt too obvious, so he dodged a different way. 

“Now that it’s done are you gonna tell me what it is?” Michael heard how he sounded petulant, but said it anyway.

“It’s better if I don’t,” Alex folded shirts with infuriating calm. 

“For you, sure.” 

“No.” He shook his head, closed the zipper on his bag. “For you. Just by knowing me you’re much closer to a dangerous mess than you should be. It was pretty selfish of me to - “ Alex cut himself off, but the implication lingered. 

“So - what? Now you leave? Pack ‘em up and go back to your big, dangerous life? So long, thanks for the fun, don’t forget to write!” It’s a feeling Michael knew well, being pushed aside. Being left. Fear made him defensive and mean. 

“Guerin,” Alex turned from the suitcase, stepped closer and stopped like he was standing at attention. “I came here for a reason, to accomplish something. I have. Nobody can find out about it, which means going back to my life like none of this happened. My time isn’t my own and neither is my life, really.” 

He sounded so matter-of-fact, like a rising wall. Resigned to it, unclear specifics defined by his feet standing at attention. It made Michael angry, but also scared. 

“What does that even mean, anyway?” 

Alex sighed, staring at the floor. He said nothing. 

“You’re in trouble, somehow? Something illegal?” Michael snapped this. “Or you’re going to? Or it’s the opposite, isn’t it? I know you’ve got some secret something - military training. Makes you a rigid hard-ass sometimes. I can tell.” 

Alex said nothing. His jaw clenched, a tendon under his ear pulling tight. 

“So I’m right? Come on. At least have the decency to tell me who I’ve been fucking. You Xerxes militia? A syndicate? Corporate security?”

“I’m a pilot. Captain Manes,” Alex said, words granite-hard, eyes suddenly flinty. “With CMI security. Maybe that will make this easier for you.” 

“You work for Central,” Michael repeated, idiotic. 

“Yes.” 

That fact should have made it easier. It didn’t. “Thought you all are a bunch of pre-programmed automatons,” Michael said. “Makes it easier to drop bombs on settlers. You are not standard government issue.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Alex said. “I’ve done that. Piloted jets with heat-seeking missiles. Designed AI systems to optimize them. I fought at Saturn and at rebellions in the belt and the Lanarus border conflict.” 

He was trying, hard as he could, to get Michael to leave. “Still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here,” Michael said instead, “rather than climbing a mountain on Mars.” 

“That’s not important.” 

“Or what your message was.” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“It doesn’t have anything to do with Central, does it?” Michael pointed, triumphant. “You’re here for something else and you don’t want to go back.” 

“I - “ Alex snapped his mouth shut, clenched his fists at his sides. “I don’t love following orders any more than you do.” 

“So don’t,” Michael said, a plan forming formless and fluid and wild in his head. “You might fool the corp overlords but you don’t fool me. It’s not what you want, is it?” 

Alex’s eyes slid to the right. “Don’t,” he said, short, which spurred Michael on.

“Look, my day-to-day isn’t taken up by fixing water pumps and hoverbikes for moisture farmers. I’m one-third of the crew of a ship, most of the time. Ship’s need a pilot, don’t they?” 

“A ship,” Alex repeated. 

“You don’t believe me.” 

“I was expecting you to storm out, not - “ Alex shook his head, a sharp movement. “It doesn’t matter. This can’t go on any longer. I shouldn’t have let it go on as long as I have. I need to report back to the hub I’m stationed at by week’s end and nobody can know where I’ve been.” 

“But you don’t want to,” Michael said this with confidence, sure he’d read it right. Alex’s reluctance, his wavering trepidation and that edge of rebellious pride. His fear. 

“No Guerin,” Alex bit out, “I don’t want to.” 

“So come with me.” Michael grasped for him, frantic and sure and flying a hundred miles a minute. He could see it so clearly; a real inhabitant for their oft-neglected pilot’s seat, a false identity, a destination as far from Central airspace as they could go. Max would complain but he’d come around. Isobel might be amused by the whole thing. And the two of them, figuring it out. A thousand nights watching star-streaked skies through the cargo bay windows at the bottom of the ship, a thousand days on any sun-drenched planet they chose. 

“What?” Alex blinked rapidly, pushing at Michael’s grasping hand but not pulling away. “Guerin, no.” 

“Why not? You’re a pilot, we need a pilot. We own the ship, my siblings and me. We run jobs. It’s easy - “ 

“I can’t,” Alex said, eyes roving near frantically. “You realize what they do to deserters, don’t you? You vanish into their prisons and factories and die there.” 

“So don’t get caught,” Michael said, like that was nothing. 

“And I don’t know your situation,” Alex talked through him, “but I can’t imagine scrutiny will make you safe. It’s dangerous for me to know you’re Antaran. It’s dangerous for you to know me at all.” Michael didn’t like quickly he’d leapt to those conclusions, how accurate they were. “And I - I have work that I owe, that I have to do. I can’t.” 

The constraints, almost physical, came up again. Michael bristled, felt the dust around his feet shift and jump without being touched. His control was slipping into anger. “You say owe,” he said. “And can’t, and shouldn’t and on and on but that doesn’t say anything about what you want. What do you want, Alex?” 

“It’s not a question of choice.” 

“Why not?” 

“What I want doesn’t matter,” Alex said and then, only then, his voice wavered. He swayed, all his steel-spined tidiness melting, and Michael caught his shoulders without thinking that Alex was trying to put distance there. His hands flexed against Michael’s chest, knuckles pulled white. 

He kissed him, less of a kiss than a removal of space for a moment that was fleeting and sweet. 

“Then just - “ Michael whispered, trying to make Alex hear his sincerity, the ragged edge of how he wanted this. Cabinets clattered, dust swirled. He couldn’t keep it all on the inside. 

Alex looked at him, wrought in misery, his dark eyes throwing back the sunset and everything it held. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.” 

He straightened, stepped away. That mask, a calculated detachment, dropped down over his face until his eyes stopped gleaming and went hard. 

Michael tried one last time, grasping at straws and his own dignity but aware of the ending. The clean brutality of it. He’d lived through something like this before, on a larger scale.

“Maybe we can see each other around,” he said, “next time you’re on leave.” 

“I think it’s better if you forget that you ever met me,” Alex said, with finality. 

He grabbed his bag and turned, his boots tracing a path through the dust. He left. His footprints blew out quickly as the wind inside the shitty rented room rose, out of control and unwanted. Michael let it shake the walls, begging for someone to throw open the door and demand he stop, stop, stop - 

But nobody did. 

So he drank, for four days. And after four days, he called Max and went home.

* * *

Collectively, it takes them six days to clean up the chaotic mess made by an hour and a half of unprepared zero-G. Kyle guards his reorganized med bay with an alarming tenacity so Michael tackles his engine room and tosses stuff around his bunk in some semblance of tidiness. Isobel leaves Alex to command the ship from the cockpit; Michael walks in on them in the kitchen discussing propulsion rates in new XI 500 engines, at a rate that makes Isobel look slightly dazzled. 

“You gonna go and offer him a job too?” Michael hisses to her, and Isobel smiled sweetly.

“Don’t be jealous,” she says, and Michael pulls a face. 

For six days they scrub the ship, watch radar for any other vessels anywhere near their location, play dice. Alex and Michael speak - about where things get filed away to, about the ship’s engine and her cooling system, about Michael’s terrible poker face. Not about the kiss. By the time they reach the traffic and strings of censor buoys that mark they’re nearing Kalidasa station, there’s something almost apologetic on Alex’s face. 

Liz and Maria are waiting for them at the upper-level docking bay they pay through the nose to get permission to dock in; their waving and shouting and jumping is clear as they land. 

“Guess I owe you some money,” Kyle says, grinning. 

“How about that?” Isobel’s smile is twice as sharp. “We do deliver.” 

“That you do. We’ll settle up.”

“Wasn’t worried about it.” 

The cargo doors open with a hiss, and the minute Alex steps through them Maria and Liz are spring across the docking bay. There’s a lot of yelling and hugging and Liz keeps elbowing Kyle in the head. 

Michael watches through the doorway, conscious of the need to give the friends their space. Isobel flicks his elbow to get his attention and stops Max before he can leave the ship too. 

“We can only afford to park in this bay for a day or two,” Isobel says sternly, pointing at both of them. “Docking fees on this station are extortion. I tell you.” 

“We’ll move the ship ‘round the back,” Max says. “Can we worry about that later?” 

“We’ll worry about it when it needs to be worried about. Michael, wait.” Michael tries to squeeze past her and out the door but Isobel grabs his arm. “Let’s talk business for a moment.” 

“Iz and I have been talking,” Max says, which never bodes well, “and we want to seriously consider offering Alex Manes a job. But, we won’t make any decisions without a vote.” 

“Kyle’s abstaining,” Isobel says. “He’s biased.”

“And I suspect we may lose him if we don’t, or if Alex doesn’t accept. I find it reassuring to have a doctor on board.” 

“We want to make sure you’re alright with opening that conversation.” 

“Why wouldn’t I be alright?” 

Isobel and Max exchange a look. 

“There’s - “ Max starts. 

“Tension,” Isobel finishes. “For your sake, I hope it’s the good kind. I’m worried it’s not.” 

Both twins nod in sync; even after all this time Michael still finds it a little off-putting when they fall right in step like this, as they’re so often coming at problems from two different angles. 

Michael wants to yell that it isn’t any of their business but - it is, in this case, and he’s trying to not resent their heavy-handed attempts at caring about him. “I can work with him,” he says instead.

“You think it’s a good idea?” 

“I think we’d be stupid not to try. But I don’t know he’s going to accept that offer.” He tries to say that lightly. 

“Can’t hurt to try,” Max says. “Then we’re decided?” They all nod. “Great. Work done. Go get drunk, people.” 

He turns and leaves the ship; Liz launches herself at him and his thrilled dopey smile could run a generator on its own.

“Insufferable,” Isobel shakes her head. “Come on.”

Maria is yanking Kyle around by his neck to get a better grip on both men, nearly smacking his and Alex's heads together, and Liz drags Max into it so they're all caught together, yelling and whooping. "Freedom!" Maria shrieks, "suck it!" 

Michael's suddenly so sure he's intruding, so profoundly out of place in their well-worn friendships, well-earned celebration. He slips out the back of the docking bay, and rents the first inexpensive room he can find somewhere the twins won't go looking for him, and for the rest of the night he keeps his head low. 

He catches up with his sister the next evening, spending the morning checking off errands for their resupply and valiantly trying to avoid anyone he knows. But he ends up in The Wild Pony like an inevitability, and Isobel is at the bar by herself with a tequila on ice. 

“There you are,” she says. “I’m here ‘cause I’m hiding from Max. He thinks his wooing is working. It’s gross.” 

“Ran through your shopping list,” Michael says, trying to avoid the subject of wooing at all. 

“That’s remarkably responsible of you. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Michael stares at the countertop, spotted with rings from glasses. “Just trying a little foresight. Speaking of - when’s the next job?” 

Isobel stares at him. “Michael,” she says. “We just escaped excessive heroics and a scrape with death. Relax! Have another drink, or three. Go find somebody to sleep with. Enjoy yourself, maybe.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Michael says. 

“I’m doing fine.” 

“And you’re talking to me like you’re talking to Max.” 

“Maybe ‘cause you’re behaving like him!” Isobel smiles, and swivels around on her stool. “Why are the counters always so sticky here?” 

“Your elbow is in something that is not beer, by the way.” Michael stands and heads towards the bar’s exit. He’s aiming for somewhere else to drink in peace, or to clear his head, or anything really - he’s not sure - but he’s stopped again by a yell from up above him. 

There’s a thin metal railing that protects a promenade walkway up above shop level on this part of the ring, and Michael’s greeted by two pairs of boots swinging above The Wild Pony’s sign when he looks up. Recognizable ones.

Maria whistles again with her fingers between her teeth, and waves, and yells his name. People are starting to look in his direction so Michael sighs, and trudges up the metal staircase to meet her. To her left, Alex nods and leans his arms on the railing. 

“What’s Michael Guerin doing walking out of my bar before closing?” Maria says, smiling. She pats the metal next to her so Michael sits too, threading his legs between metal rungs. The spot gives them a vantage view of the whole ring, bustling with people. 

“To stop people recognizing me,” Michael says, shaking his head. “What are you two doing up here?”

“Yelling at passersby,” Alex says. 

“And drinking,” Maria agrees. “And having a very important debate.” 

“Deadly serious.” Alex, appearing and disappearing in Michael’s line of sight on the other side of Maria’s head, is trying not to smile. 

“Hit me,” Michael says, mostly powerless to stop it after seeing that expression - wanting to chase it further. 

“Max Evans,” Maria says, tapping her chin. “Yay or nay.” 

“Hell and the black,” Michael groans. “Don’t subject me to this.” 

“Nay,” Alex says, rolling his eyes. “He’s just tall.”

“Not for you,” Maria swipes at him. “For Liz. I think she’s genuinely interested.” 

“Maybe it’ll put him out of his misery,” Michael says. “Because, trust me, he’s miserable and it makes the rest of us miserable too.” 

“Isobel Evans,” Alex says, turning to Maria. “Yay or nay.” 

“Go fuck yourself,” she grins, and stands up. “A lady doesn’t discuss those things in public.” 

“What?” Michael snaps his head between them. Maria laughs, ruffling his hair.

“Don’t worry about it, Guer,” she says. “If you boys excuse me, I have to make sure nobody burns down my bar. Don’t lose him - “ she points at Alex. “I just got him back and I’d be cross if something happens to him.” 

“I’ll do my best,” Michael says, and they watch her descend the steps and cross beneath the railing to go back inside the bar. Alex waves down at her, then returns his hands to the railing and his head to rest on his elbow. 

That leaves them properly alone for the first time since they’d kissed in the engine bay, no gravity and all adrenaline. 

“How’s Kalidasa treating you?” Michael says, then winces internally. Alex raises his eyebrows. 

“Fine,” he says. “Maria and Liz dragged me to every watering hole on this station and now I’m intimately familiar with the toilet of The Wild Pony because I puked in it. Looked into changing my name - complicated. Looked into getting a commercial pilot’s license out of this station - much simpler. Apparently there’s a market for CMI escapees who know their way around a bird or a security system. I thought you had to move your ship?” 

“Tomorrow. Maxwell didn’t chat you up?” Michael asks sharply.

Alex snorts. “He did. He’s too tall for me.” He pauses at Michael’s stricken face. “I’m joking. Yes, he talked to me about the job.” 

“Ew,” Michael shakes his head. “What’d you tell him?”

“That I’d think about it.” Alex inclines his head. The neon sign flashing from the bar’s doorway at their feet throws pink and purple lights up into his eyes, the curve of his cheek. 

“Would you have said yes if he propositioned you?” It just falls out of Michael’s mouth, but to his relief Alex laughs. 

“No,” he says. “Like I said, he’s not my type.” 

“Would it help if I propositioned you?” 

Alex doesn’t blink at that. “You can try,” he says, edging into flirtatious that dies just as fast. “Sorry. I have to think about it.” 

“Why won’t you consider flying with us?” Michael says it bluntly because he’s not sure he can hold it in any longer. “Is it the ship? I know she’s old.”

“It’s not the ship. I like the ship.”

“Then what? You need Max to draft you an official letter? Wanna join the pilot’s union first?” 

“Knocked that one out already,” Alex says. “No, it’s - “

“If you say _ dangerous _I’m gonna spit on you,” Michael says. “The whole fucking galaxy’s dangerous.” 

Alex tugs his bottom lip with his teeth, considering him. Abruptly, he stands up, pulling himself steady on the railing. “Can we walk somewhere?” he says. “I don’t know if I can have this conversation anywhere near Maria’s bar. She hoards gossip, you know.”

Michael stands too, nodding. Privately he thinks Alex is looking to buy himself some time, but he can’t fault him for that. 

Alex leads him on a winding path through the station, down two floors in the habitat ring to an area that’s less commerce and housing and more public buildings - schools and offices and union buildings, the obligatory public park space where strictly rationed water goes towards keeping things green just because. Michael follows, letting the station move around him. The flow of people and voices and music, and outside the window the stars from new angles as they move in curves through the ring. Alex stops at the edge of the park, a glass dome inside the dome meant to generate oxygen and recycle water, preserve humidity. The air inside it is hot and wet. Michael can feel it inside his lungs, pressing and unfamiliar. 

“I’ve been here a hundred times and never known this existed.” Michael ducks his head to avoid the water dripping from a fern right into the brim of his hat. 

“First time I came here Maria showed me this place,” Alex says. “I spent a rotation stationed on Xerxes 11. The whole moon is like this - I loved it. Little nostalgia.” 

He steps around a fallen log, crawling with moss. Michael notices how he steadies himself carefully on the right, the noticeable change in his movement. A little cautious, a little stiff. It was easier to miss in the narrow confines and railing of the ship. 

“Nostalgia’s a bitch,” Michael says, dragging them back to the conversation. Alex turns, nods. Clears his throat. Something in his eyes is wild and nervous; Michael can see the whites around them. He hasn’t even started speaking yet. 

“Sometimes.” 

“Think you should say what you need to say,” Michael gestures, seriously wondering if this was a mistake. 

Alex clears his throat again, staring at his feet then the dripping plants then Michael’s face. Michael lets him work through it, leaning into the silence until it almost hurts. 

“I wasn’t expecting to meet you,” Alex says, finally. It’s so anticlimactic that Michael leans back, nearly sliding on wet moss. 

“No shit,” he snaps. “I’m sure you picked the butthole of nowhere as a clandestine meeting spot for a reason, like I picked it as the best spot for an epic sulk. So I wouldn’t run into nobody.” 

“That’s not what - “ Alex stands up ramrod-straight. Michael’s noticed that he goes rigid and aligned when he’s uncomfortable, as if to deflect criticism from his posture, his bearing, his speech - anything at all. He sinks into relaxation like an accident. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean, Alex?” Maybe Michael’s the opposite; maybe words fly out of him before he can stop them, loose and wild and prone to catch drop and roll. 

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Alex says; fists clenched, jaw tight, spine like a steel rod. It looks like it hurts. “Then, now. Here. Anywhere. Ever, Michael.” 

“Sorry to throw a spanner in the works of your carefully constructed plans. I’m good at that, everyone says. All trouble and no direction.” 

“You’re not - you’re not listening to me, you’re not giving me space - “ Alex clutches at his hair, so Michael does the prurient thing and shuts up. He just nods, gestures at Alex to continue, to get towards his point. Water drips on to his hat. He ignores it. 

Alex inhales, lets it go on a long slow exhale. Intentional and controlled, which doesn’t match with the expression on his face. 

“I told you,” he says finally, “my life wasn’t really my own. A little dramatic, maybe, but it wasn’t a lie. I’m the youngest of four decorated military men, from a long line of decorated military men. I played at rebellion, as a kid. Tried my best at it. But eventually I fell in line and did what my father wanted me to do. That makes me a coward, I know. But I figured it out, eventually.” 

Michael wants to contradict him, argue, throw something - anyone to chase the expression on Alex’s face off it. A steel-jawed acceptance of what he’s saying. But he gets the feeling if he speaks, Alex will stop speaking about this for good. So he says nothing. 

“I spent years of my life not thinking about what I did, what it meant. I’d gotten pretty good at feeling insignificant. Dad’s good at that. Came naturally.” Alex’s voice turned mechanical, bleached of feeling. “I could tell myself I was just one person, what did it matter what I did or didn’t do? But I spent years just running in the wheel of a galactic power play. I fought on the front lines in three frontier wars. Did terrible things there. Killed people. Lost people, friends. Lost a limb. And somewhere in there I got angry again. Do you know how that feels? Getting angry when you’ve told yourself to feel nothing for so long?”

“Yeah, actually,” Michael says. 

“Of course you do, I - “ Alex swallows. “Sorry.” 

“I tend to do really stupid shit when I’m angry,” Michael says carefully. “It’s a character flaw.” 

“I started hacking into secured Central databases and smuggling data out of the system,” Alex says, picking up the thread again. “If that’s what you mean by stupid. Reckless, certainly. Dangerous, but I calculated risks. Once I got over the fear it was easy. It felt good to stand up against something. Against the system, against my dad. The more time went on, the less the risk mattered to me. Because it was personal risk, the kind I could bear. It didn’t involve anybody else. Putting myself on the line - “ His words falter, unsteady, “ - back against the wall, it was a rebellion that mattered. Something to work for. To die for. And then I met you.” 

Michael starts. Instinctually, he tries to close the distance between them. Alex lets him. Hard and fast for a moment, he grasps Michael’s hand and his wrist. Alex’s eyes are dark, troubled and open. 

“I was on that rock,” he says slowly, “to pass on covert data to a forming rebel camped in the asteroid belt and being hunted by Central military intelligence. At any cost.” 

Michael blinks. “Dangerous.” 

“I told you.” Alex smirks, just a flash. Then his face drops again, a flinch. Like he’s expecting blowback from what he’s about to say. “But then - there you were. And that was easy too, in a way that I’d never - “ he closes his eyes. “I’ve never felt. I never had something to lose. I never - “ 

His voice breaks. His spine bends. Michael catches him and holds him and when Alex looks up at him there’s a question in his face. The racing cacophony of Michael’s heartbeat almost hurts.

“I don’t think I could’ve made the decision to run if we hadn’t met,” Alex says. “You said it like it was nothing, you landed on some shitty planet just to see the sights, you never stopped to question if I was a bad idea. Maybe you stuck with me.” 

It’s too much information all at once, coming out of Alex like a flood. He stares up at Michael with a line of argument in his eyes, like he’s daring Michael to contradict him. Michael believes him, so surely and completely in the wide expanse of it. He just does. 

“It is pretty fucking weird,” Michael says, “this whole galaxy and you end up being best friends with the guy who sewed my thumb back on.” 

That’s not what he wants to say at all but Alex smiles a little so it’s worth it. “No kidding,” he says. “Maybe you can understand why I can’t just risk you and your family and everything you have. Things like this don’t happen to people like me. Maybe they shouldn’t.” The smile’s gone. 

“For a long time,” Michael says, not bothering to think of hiding how his voice wavers, “I thought I’d hit the quota of people to care for in this galaxy. You know? Most of my family is dead. Or if they’re not, they might as well be. I’ve got Isobel and Max and that’s been enough. Friends, sure, here and there but nobody else mattered. I resigned myself to that one pretty early. You only get so many changes at that kind of thing. But then - “ 

“Then what?” 

“I met you,” Michael says - sincere, resigned, as hopeful as he can make it. 

Alex opens his mouth, the humidity clinging to his upper lip just a little. To his lashes. “Guerin - “

“And maybe it’s testing fate,” Michael keeps going, breakneck speed so Alex can’t stop him, “and maybe it’s stupid and risky and maybe it’ll go down like a lead balloon but you gotta understand why I have to at least try. I’m not really the kind of person this happens to. I survived a civil war - I am definitely not an optimist. But - “ 

Alex nods, just a little, so Michael beats him to the punch - to the ending.

“Will you come with us?” 

He runs out of words. A first, maybe. All he can hope is that Alex understands him. And the silence hurts. 

Alex licks his lips, his hands flexing against Michael’s elbows. 

“Can I think about it? I have to - “

“Weigh the risk,” Michael says.

“Yes.” 

“Of course,” Michael knows it’s not an irrational thing to ask, that most people don’t live their lives yanked around by gut feelings and intuition. “But, if your answer’s no - “ and he pauses because this stings, even if it’s real, “ - it might be best if I don’t see you for a while.” 

“I understand,” Alex says, like Michael knew he would. He straightens, removes his hands from Michael’s elbows. Michael catches them before he goes too far. 

“But if your answer is still maybe,” he says, “I think I get to try that proposition to see if it’ll help.” He twists his hands, catching Alex’s between his own. He’s got a callused ridge on his palm, along his fingertips. 

“Go on,” Alex says, barely audible. 

“Will you spend the night with me?” 

“Yes,” Alex says, and that response comes fast. “I will.” 

Michael wants to grin, cry, throw something, cheer, throw something else. But he doesn’t. What he does is get kissed. Hauled in by the collar and caught, hands on either side of his face, and then kissed. Like he remembers. Better than he remembers. The air is so thick he feels like he’s swimming in it. 

They stay there for a long time, until water soaks into Michael’s collar and his hair. And when Alex turns, Michael follows him.

* * *

There's a healing scar where Alex had been shot, right in the warm spot above his hipbone. Michael stares at it in the grey-dark of his rented hotel room. He'd dozed, after tumbling Alex backwards through the door and into bed, but he's awake again and unable to sleep. What passes for three in the morning on a station without a sun. Sometimes he misses living on a planet. Not often but - sometimes. 

That scar he doesn't recognize, new as it is, but there's another one along Alex's hairline, and another above his elbow. And the neat surgical scar right below his knee, white and very final. Michael lets himself look at it in the dark without being watched, to settle with the new shape. He wonders how Alex has settled with the new shape, how it's changed him.

When Michael touches the scar on his stomach, pink and new skin, Alex shifts a little. Sighs. His eyes move just enough under closed lids to indicate Michael may have woken him. 

"Guerin," Alex says, a rough whisper, which makes him sure. Michael flattens his hand over Alex's hip. Watches for the reaction, for Alex to turn away. 

He doesn't. He pushes his hip into Michael's hand, slow heat with no hurry. Michael takes that as an invitation, something agonizingly slow and secret; his mouth along the shell of Alex's ear, his jaw, his throat. In the dark, he makes it last as long as he can, pushing Alex to gasping and then backing away. Time bleeds into immutability, the way it does on long-distance space-flight. All standards and conventions lost in the black. It feels like that, the walls of the room and the hum of the station pressing in to keep them there. Alex says his name. 

He doesn't know if that's a goodbye, or a promise. 

* * *

During functional daytime in big habitat stations like Kalidasa, the lights adjust on a timer to be brighter and warmer and full of vitamin-inducing filters. Michael blinks the passable sunshine from his eyes as he watches Max heft boxes into the cargo bay of the Old Faithful in preparation to move the ship to the other side of the ring and a less pricey docking bay. It’s earlier than he’d like but he’d been unable to lay down, pacing and fidgeting and sketching engine plans in the air and watching Alex sleep. Alex did sleep, frowning, and eventually, Michael couldn't take it and got dressed, slid out the door into shifting light. 

Max was already at the ship, sleep-tousled and looking pleased with himself. Michael didn’t ask where he’d spent the night. 

“You going to stand there and watch?” he asks, so Michael set in on the boxes too. 

Isobel joins them an hour or two later, bearing breakfast and looking well-rested, and Michael is surprised to see Kyle with her. His heart leaps, traitorously. 

“What?” Kyle raises an eyebrow. “Still have a job, don’t I?” 

“I guess I just assumed you’d be off now you’ve gotten what you want from us,” Michael says. 

Kyle looks at him seriously for a minute. “Not today,” he says, and claps Michael on the back as he passes him. “Afraid you were gonna miss me?” 

Michael peers behind him, and towards the docking bay doors. Kyle’s alone. Any chance that Alex might have accompanied him over here dies. 

“Help us move this shit then, if you’re still here,” Michael snaps with more force than necessary, and Kyle laughs but pitches in. 

A half-hour passes and their collection of restocked cargo dwindles. Michael’s pace slows as his heartrate paces up, hands clammy and mood irritable. He snaps at Kyle again, then twice at Max for being in his way. They’re just moving the ship to the other side of the station, not leaving with any permanence, but it feels like a symbolic ending. A race against liftoff, something he can’t take back. He’s second-guessing his ultimatum, then angry, then two seconds from running off to find Alex himself, then furious all in turns. 

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Isobel remarks. “Were you successful in hiring us a pilot or not?” 

Michael glares at her, yanking a box a little too hard so it flies out of his hands. He goes chasing after it by hand, anything to get out of his sister’s knowing glare, and almost smacks straight into someone who’s stepped into the otherwise-empty docking bay. 

“Move the fuck out of - “ Michael snarls, already swinging for a fight, and he pops upright at lighting speed - to stare right into Alex’s face. 

“The fuck where?” Alex smiles. “Steady on.” His hair is rumpled and his face unshaven, wearing a clean shirt and the boots Michael had watched him tug off last night. He’s carrying a canvas bag and - Michael blinks - a guitar. 

“You - “ Michael opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. 

“Hi,” Alex says. He shifts, fiddles with the strap on his shoulder. He’s nervous, Michael realizes. “I’m hoping to accept that job offer. Hope I’m not too late.” 

“Cutting it a little close,” Michael finds his voice. 

“Cost-benefit analyses take time,” Alex says. “When someone keeps you up all night.” 

"I'm not gonna apologize for that.” 

“Not asking you too. Good morning, Captain.” Alex waves at Max, his voice suddenly professional and neat. “I’m hoping that position is still open.” 

“Yours if you want it,” Max says, looking pleased. 

“I have credentials,” Alex says, “if you wish to see them.” 

“And we’re not bureaucrats,” Isobel steps up behind Max. “We talked it over and we think you’re a shoe-in. Well, we didn’t ask Kyle. He’s biased.” 

“Consider yourself hired,” Max extends his hand and Alex shakes it, neat and businesslike. Michael’s trying very hard to keep his face in line, to stop the wild exaltation from roaming across it. He doesn’t entirely succeed, but neither of his siblings stoop low enough to comment. “I mean, Isobel did write up a work contract and you should probably sign it and I know you joined the union so that’s - “

“ - fine, yes. Thank you,” Alex cuts Max off generously. 

“Yes!” Kyle, apparently sensing the official moment has ended, barrels into the middle of them, pounding Alex on the shoulder. “You really left me hanging there, Manes, I was about to get on my knees and beg!” 

“That’s not necessary,” Alex slides his arm around Kyle’s shoulder, a comfortable camaraderie. “Though interesting to know you’ll do that for me - “ 

“Doc, why don’t you get him set in one of the spare bunks,” Max says. “We’ll get the rest of this gear loaded. Isobel, it would go faster if you pitched in you know.” 

“I’m sure,” Isobel rolls her eyes, and before Michael can say anything else Kyle is leading Alex into the ship. His ship. Their ship. 

He turns, bends down towards the boxes to get a handle on his pulse. His hands are shaking. 

“They’re charging by the hour today,” Isobel says somewhere above him, and Michael throws her the rudest hand gesture he can with his hands full and gets to work. It goes fast. He’s nearly singing. 

A half an hour after that, punctually, Isobel is balancing their bill and Michael is stepping up into the galley of the ship. The steps that go from the kitchen to the long hallway with six bunk doors are empty, and his footsteps echo a little as he climbs them. Second-guessing himself, he’s running over his own words in his memory. He wants to find Alex as much as he dreads it, a half-hour alone plenty of time to instill a running litany of doubt in his mind. And - like he was summoned - there Alex is, standing at the end of the hallway with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the bolted metal ceiling. 

“So,” Alex says, tilting his head down to give Michael a long look, “I have a laundry list of ideas and some suggestions about improving this old girl’s power and maneuverability. You’re the expert, though. Hoping I can run them by you.” 

“Some ideas, huh?” The tension leaves him; Michael adjusts his hat, sidles down the hall a step at a time. “And suggestions. To run by me.” 

“I’m guessing we’ll be working very closely together,” Alex says, deadpan. “And, no offense, but it’s quite a list.” 

“Seems like you’re going to cause trouble for me already,” Michael says. He’s reached the end of the hallway, and leans his hip casually against the open bunk door it seems Alex has claimed. It’s right at the end, next to Kyle’s and across from Michael’s own. 

“I hope so,” Alex says, his expression slate neutral but for his eyes, which are bright. “Just the good kind.” 

“That’s what I like,” Michael says. Closer, and even closer. Alex watches him, his face cracking into something soft and fragile. His hands go to Michael’s waist. 

“But seriously,” Alex says, close enough Michael can feel the words against his jaw, “I think we can reroute some of the circuitry to double engine power and allow a real shield installation with a pretty simple - “

Michael kisses him. Alex’s mouth is open when he does and his words end in a gasp of surprise, an electric slide of teeth. His hands are sure on Michael’s waist, sliding just above his belt like a promise. The metal of the doorframe digs into Michael’s back and he doesn’t care - in his ship, their ship - and when the kiss gets longer, Alex’s tongue on the bottom of his upper lip, he’s all but ready to shove him through the door and lock it. Schedule be damned. 

That’s what someone clears their throat behind them, pointedly. 

They leap apart, Michael banging his shoulder on the door and knocking his hat askew. Mercifully it’s Isobel at the end of the hall, and not Max. She’s looking at them with a very smug expression on her face, her arms crossed. 

“You know,” she says, as Alex coughs, “I really thought Max and darling Liz Ortecho were going to be my problem but here you two are instead. I can’t handle a second set of nauseating doe-eyes, Michael, I really cannot. Carry on but please - have some class.” 

“Don’t compare me to Max,” Michael snaps, righting his hat. “Come on, Iz. Give me a little credit.” 

“You have better taste,” Isobel concedes. “Manes? I don’t think I need to shotgun speech you but I do have an airlock and I know how to use it.” 

Alex, flushing a little, looks up at her without blinking. Lesser men turn and run at Isobel’s grandstanding. Michael tumbles faster. “If you skip that part,” he says, “I’ll skip something similar about you and my dear friend. Alright?” 

“What?” Michael whips his head from Isobel to Alex and back. Isobel raises an eyebrow, considering. 

“Fine,” she says. “Glad we understand each other. Now, please remove your tongue from my brother’s person and let’s take off, alright? They really do charge by the hour and I will not pay extra.” 

“What’s she talking about?” Michael asks. 

Alex stops, touches his chin. Smiles. “Nothing,” he says, and he turns towards the cockpit. 

“That legitimately worries me,” Michael says, following. “You and my sister and any kind of secrets. Scheming. I see it already.” 

Alex flashes a smile over his shoulder and descends the steps, crosses into the cockpit like he belongs there. He finagles the seat for a moment, rotating it back to stretch his right leg out, and drums all ten fingers on the dashboard. Isobel slides into the co-pilot’s seat, previously largely unoccupied unless Michael wants to bother her, and flashes a thumbs up. Max leans one arm against the back of her seat, watching Alex flick a few switches. Even Kyle, self-possessed to hate this part of flying to the point he often lies down in the med bay during takeoff, crams himself behind Max. 

Michael leans against the doorframe, taking the scene in. The docking bay doors open, revealing a stretch of free space, charted but unlawful and chaotic. Light from the station spills out into the blackness, whorls of stars and distance pulling it away. A multitude of lights, many colors and shapes and sizes, indicate other ships coming and going. 

Alex’s face is framed against the glass windshield, shoulders bracketed up against the stretch of free sky, unlimited distance. He turns just enough to look in Michael’s direction, something quick and private. 

“At your word, Captain,” he says. 

“Take her away,” Max says. 

Alex’s hands work; the engine starts with a rumble, the kind felt deep in the bones. That enduring kick and buzz of safety and freedom, a metal certainty against the crushing void. A promise that, with enough power and time, you could travel anywhere. 

That’s space writ large, and Michael feels it turned personal in the space between himself and Alex. A promise. The list of things they don’t know about each other is lightyears longer than the ones they do, but that’s what time is for. Time and distance and the freedom to stretch out into either, if you want to. 

The engine turns over. Alex pulls them up and through the docking bay doors, and into the waiting sky.

* * *

That night, Liz and Maria show up at the shittier docking bay they landed in; Maria's carting an expensive jug of tequila and Liz brings dinner and they all cram into the galley to knock elbows until Liz shoves them away from the counter. 

"To freedom!" Maria yells, hefting her glass. 

"To gainful employment," Alex says and rolls his eyes, but drinks anyway. He meets Michael's eyes over the top of Maria's head and smiles. Michael wants to ask him what got him to change his mind, if he'll change it again the minute the wind changes. He wants everybody out of his ship so he can peel Alex's vest from his shoulders as slow as he pleases. But the bright and the warmth and the laughter smooth him over; he drinks too, and when Alex leans against his shoulder as he steps behind him Michael to refill his glass, Michael leans back. 

"So," Maria says a minute later, effectively cornering Michael against the doorway - an impressive feat for someone inches shorter than him. "You and Alex, huh." 

"Don't sound so shocked," Michael says. "I can be charming, when I wanna be." 

"It's nice," Maria squeezes his elbow. "And - be careful with him. I just got him back." 

"I will," Michael says, and she winks and squeezes his elbow again. It's way too sincere, her warm expression, so Michael swerves hard. "Try not to be too broken up about the fact that I'm not freewheeling," he says. "This chemistry's not going anywhere, DeLuca." 

Maria removes her hand from his elbow. Fast. "Guerin," she says, the corner of her mouth quivering. "You're barking up the wrong tree, buddy." 

"C'mon," Michael says. "Not to sound conceited but I have eyes."

"You know I'm sleeping with your sister," Maria says. "Right?" 

Michael shuts his mouth, a hard snap. 

"Ah," he says. "What?" 

"Yeah," Maria pats his shoulder. "Good try though."

"What?" Michael mouths this across the room in Isobel's direction. She shrugs, smug. "Where have I been?" 

"Moping?" 

"Get me another drink," Michael snaps, and she snatches his glass away to do so. 

The seven of them mostly fit around the galley table with minimal nudging and bumping and the meal rolls out slowly. After two tequilas, Alex's ankle ends up right against Michael's under the table. He and Kyle draw them all into a convoluted story about an adventurous night during his academy days, and it's only when that winds down that Michael realizes there's an air of tension in the room - an expectation. 

“So,” Liz leans back in her seat and sets down her fork, nudging Kyle with her shoulder in a way Michael doesn’t think is accidental. “There’s something the four of us need to tell you.” 

Kyle nods, and Maria twists one of the rings around her fingers nervously. Alex’s face doesn’t change but his shoulders tighten. A giveaway, Michael is learning. 

“Let me guess,” Isobel says. “Something’s gone wrong again?” 

Liz frowns at her, a ferocity in her expression that’s shocking. Maria shakes her head subtly. And Alex starts speaking, like he’s smoothing things over. 

“Everything that’s happened,” he says slowly, “is par for the course for Central’s operations. Restricting data, controlling communication. I spent years getting information out of their systems because it’s the right thing to do, but I didn’t start digging through classified files for altruistic reasons. I was looking for something specific. Something hidden.” 

“Something a lot bigger than a data leak,” Kyle says, “even if the leak turned out to be Master Sergeant Manes’ son. That’s gonna be water cooler drama for a while. Karma’s a bitch.” 

“Do any of you have normal hobbies?” Isobel asks. 

“I like kickball,” Kyle says. 

“What are you talking about?” Max asks, and Liz sits up straight again, presses her lips together until they go white. 

“When we were seventeen,” she says, “my older sister went missing.” 

That’s not what Michael was expecting at all; he leans forward in spite of himself, bumping his knee into Alex’s under the table. Alex doesn’t move his away. 

“We were a working-class family living on a wealthy inner planet, and it wasn’t easy,” Liz says, her eyes locked on Max’s face, “but I had these two and I had my dad and Rosa.”

“She was an older sister to me too,” Alex says softly, “in a lot of ways. Dragged me into a lot of trouble. Gave me a lot of advice - some good, some not. Never mattered.” 

“When she vanished,” Liz continues, and Michael gets the impression she’s trying very hard to keep emotion from her voice, “I think we assumed she had run off. She was troubled in some ways and she talked about it. Wanted to. But, a year later someone found her body. Or, they say it was her body. It - it wasn’t recognizable. She was declared dead anyway.” 

She stops. Maria puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“I’m so sorry,” Max says, hushed. He reaches for her hand and Liz lets him take it, and for once Michael can’t even roll his eyes at his genteel affection. He presses his knee harder into Alex’s leg. Alex is frowning hard across the table. 

“Thank you,” Liz says. She wipes at her face with her other hand. “The point is that Rosa’s death never sat right with me. But I was a kid, and I was mourning my sister and just wanted to forget. It wasn’t until years later that I found myself thinking about it again, how strange it had all been. How convenient. The three of us and then Maria - we started wondering about the things that didn’t add up.”

“The medical examiner was employed by Central,” Kyle recites, “and Liz and Arturo never got to see the body before it was carbonized, and they didn’t follow standard procedure for identification of remains.” 

“If it smells like a fish and looks like a fish,” Maria says, shaking her head. 

“I had just been promoted into Central intelligence,” Alex says, “which gave me an opportunity to start looking. And I did, and never really stopped.” He looks at Michael, his face serious. “This is the part of this story where we give you a chance to throw us out an airlock.” 

“Or at the very least walk back that offer of employment,” Kyle says. “We don’t have to bring it with us but it’s not something any of us are going to put down.” 

“Just say it,” Michael says. He puts his hand on Alex’s knee and squeezes. 

“What I found - “ Alex’s face is steely and he grips Michael’s hand hard for a second before letting it go, “ - it’s weirder, and worse, than anything we know Central does. They’ve tried very hard to bury this information. I found it, but it took me a long time. And it’s only the edge of a huge secret they want nobody to know - but it’s personal to us.” 

“A decade ago my sister went missing,” Liz says, fierce and cold. “And I was told she was dead. But she’s not. We have proof.” 

Max sits up straighter, and Isobel leans in at attention too. The room feels close, purposeful, holding its breath. It should be dangerous - it is. The kind of danger they’ve tried so hard to steer away from, searching for anything that might keep them safe. But the whole galaxy’s dangerous. Michael said that himself just yesterday. 

“You promised me an adventure,” Michael says, under his breath. Alex’s mouth is hard but his eyes are soft.

“You asked for one.” 

“My sister,” Liz says, looking around the table with an air of near-fervent conspiracy, “vanished into a Central experimental medical facility ten years ago, and every record of it was scrubbed and hidden until Alex found them again. We don’t know why, or what they’re so desperate to hide.” 

“Guess I thought you were being a little more figurative,” Michael whispers. “Like an entendre.” 

“I think best when I’m wrapping my head around both,” Alex says. 

Michael is so completely, overwhelmingly fond of him. Wherever this is going, he’s ready to hear it just for that reason if not any other. He gets the feeling whatever Liz is about to say is important, vital, leading them towards something bigger whether they want to go or not. 

“My sister,” Liz says one final time, “is alive, and a Central conspiracy to make us think she’s not obscured her death. And I am going to find a way to get her back.” 

**Author's Note:**

> YES THAT'S A LEAD-IN TO A CONSPIRACY TO DISMANTLE. THANKS. we're not thinking about firefly and the tam siblings in 2020. we aren't. seriously. shut up. 
> 
> you're gonna carry that weight... 
> 
> i'm leescoresbies.tumblr.com! comments keep my self esteem wheel rolllllllin thank you love you xoxo


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